


Because Potter Is Allergic to Poppies

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Healers, Humor, M/M, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-13
Updated: 2012-04-12
Packaged: 2017-11-03 13:27:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 41,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Auror Harry Potter is in hospital being treated for a curse when someone tries to kill him. Obviously it is up to bored, trapped Apprentice Healer Draco, who was only admitted to the Healer Program in the first place to do the menial work, to find out who did it. Because then they will promote him. No, it’s for no other reason, thanks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Poppies and Patients

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fairly light story, despite the attempted murder part. A good deal of Hapless!Draco.

_Part One—Poppies and Patients_

“Apprentice Healer Malfoy, I need you to change Mrs. Fallon’s dressings.”

“Apprentice Healer Malfoy, _why_ hasn’t the rubbish been removed from Jerry Hastings’s room yet?”

“Apprentice Healer Malfoy, you have to…”

“Apprentice Healer Malfoy!”

That was the chorus that rang in Draco’s ears all day long, to the point that he was sleepwalking because he had dreams that people were calling him that and he had to answer.

_Not that it matters,_ he told himself fiercely as he emptied Hastings’s rubbish into the common bin that waited at the end of each ward. He had to hold his nose as he did so. Hastings had been struck with the Mucus-Vomiting Curse, and the cloths that had been thrown away were shades of green Draco had never wanted to know existed. _It doesn’t matter what they call me and how they try to get on my nerves and make me quit. I’m not going to. They’ll see that it doesn’t matter, that all their entreaties can’t change my mind._

But sometimes it didn’t feel like that. Sometimes it felt as though people had just forgotten that he was there and what purpose he had originally entered for—to become a full Healer and know everything about the wizarding body—and assumed he had _wanted_ to be a glorified errand boy.

In fact, Draco had wanted a profession that would enable him to get out of England and travel anywhere he wished. Becoming a Healer had sounded perfect. What wizarding community couldn’t use Healers? He had pictured himself leaning against a terrace with grapes above his head, while admiring former patients held out goblets of wine to him and he gave advice on rare and exciting diseases or curses now and then, when he wished to.

The Ministry had taken his family’s money, but they couldn’t take his dreams.

Instead, he had stayed an Apprentice Healer for three years, long after the slowest of the people he had entered the program with had been accepted as journeymagi. The administration of St. Mungo’s hadn’t forgotten his past, and they would never allow him to rise while memories of the war still lingered.

In one sense, Draco could see the justice of that. Even if he became a full Healer, it was unlikely that some patients would ever accept his care—one reason he had wanted to go abroad.

In another sense, he wished the people preaching “tolerance and acceptance” since the war would take their propaganda and shove it up their arses if they didn’t actually believe it. In practice, “tolerance and acceptance” meant embracing Muggleborns who had done desperate things to survive during the war and reassuring them that they wouldn’t be tried as criminals. No one had nearly as much sympathy for former followers of the Dark Lord.

Draco had sent a letter detailing the desperate things he’d had to do to survive to the _Daily Prophet_ when they were printing stories of “war heroes” who hid in cellars and ate rubbish. They’d sent a Howler in return. Draco could _still_ feel the sting of the scorn in Healer Mallow’s eyes when the Howler hovered in the middle of their class on treating botched potions, showering abuse on him.

He had told Draco not to do that again. Draco had responded that he hadn’t _asked_ to have a Howler sent to him, and didn’t Healer Mallow know how Howlers worked?

That might have been the beginning of his career as a servant, incidentally.

The Ministry took his family’s fortune. Oh, they _said_ it was for reparations, but Draco didn’t notice any Muggleborns the money was supposedly destined for living any better. The Ministry officials who collected it had larger office a few months later, though.

Draco had known for a long time that the Ministry was corrupt and could be bought. But he had never counted on being on the other _side_ of that.

His parents had emigrated to Iceland just ahead of the officials who would have tried them. So Draco was seized in their place, but even his most zealous enemies had had to admit there wasn’t much evidence for the “crimes” he’d committed.

“Apprentice Healer Malfoy, you’re needed in the Spell Damage Ward!”

Draco ran, jolted out of his thoughts. Opportunities to help in the Spell Damage Ward were relatively rare; it was practically Healer Mallow’s private preserve, and he had retained his dislike for Draco.

Of course, Draco probably knew more about treating the results of certain wrong spells than anyone on that ward _except_ Healer Mallow himself. He’d been in the rooms constantly during the long, delicate, tricky times that a spell’s magic needed to be unwoven and pulled out of a patient’s body, with nothing to do but observe. The higher-ranked Apprentice Healers and journeymagi were the ones entrusted with the actual important tasks.

Draco _knew_ he could prove himself, if they would only allow him to do so.

But now wasn’t the time to whinge about that. Draco passed the doors of the Spell Damage Ward and had no trouble spotting the way to the patient’s room, since the chattering crowd spilled out into the corridor. He pushed through them with liberal application of his elbows and return of insult for insult, and then jerked to a halt, staring.

The patient on the bed in front of him was Harry Potter.

Granted, it was sort of hard to recognize him while he was flopping all over the place, each limb appearing to have a will of its own. But Draco had looked at the eyes and the scar first, he always did, and that was what he recognized. He came cautiously towards the bed, wondering what had happened, and whether Healer Mallow wanted him for an important task. His chest started to swell as he imagined helping to save the Savior’s life—

“Apprentice!” Mallow roared. “Hold his arm down!”

Draco scowled, but sprang to his task as Potter’s elbow nearly smacked the Healer in the face. The arm resisted him, and Draco noticed the spongy texture to the skin. Then, even as he held it, he felt the sponginess become stoniness.

“The Marble Walking Curse, sir?” he asked Mallow.

Mallow scowled at him, but he didn’t have time to say anything. He was too busy sticking his wand down Potter’s throat and chanting the spell that would create a passage there which he could more easily pour the life-saving potion through. The Marble Walking Curse turned the entire body gradually to stone, and once the process began, patients couldn’t swallow.

Draco turned his eyes away from the grotesque widening of Potter’s mouth, which he had seen several times before, and examined the Savior. There was a wound on his face, a nasty cut that ran the length of his jaw to surface near his right ear, but no one was attending to it. Draco could understand why. If they lost the battle against the curse, then it would become nothing more than an interesting seam on a statue.

Potter’s eyes kept opening and closing, and he kept whistling like a teakettle. Draco wondered how in the world he _could_ , with Mallow’s wand down his throat. Mallow was shouting over his shoulder for someone to bring him the correct potion, and Draco had to practically sit on Potter’s arm to keep it still.

He did glance up as the potion was handed in. It was in the squat, flask-like type of vial that Mallow preferred, and it was bright green with flecks of gold floating in it—

Draco straightened and stared. “Sir!” he shouted a moment later.

“Not now, Apprentice,” Mallow said, and he spoke Draco’s title with more emphasis than he had to, because that was just the kind of bastard he was. He seized the flask and tipped it so that the lip rested against the widened tunnel in Potter’s throat. The liquid started to creep down.

Not sure of what else to do except the most extreme, because it wasn’t as if someone would listen to him, Draco batted at the flask. It flew out of Mallow’s delicate grip and hit the far wall, spraying potion every which way.

Immediately every sound in the room stopped, all the shouting and all the chaos, except the whistle from Potter’s throat and the thump and flap of his arms and legs as he struggled. Even that was slowing down, Draco knew, because the Marble Walking Curse was having its effect. 

Mallow turned on his heel to stare at Draco. Full Healers had pissed themselves over less than the look he was giving Draco now. “I want you to explain why you did that,” he said quietly, “and condemned a hero to death. Before I strip you of your Apprentice title and send you out of this hospital.”

Draco contained the impulse to snap back that apparently doing that was more important than _saving someone’s life_ , and retorted, “Because that wasn’t the right potion, _sir_. The Stone Response potion is dark red with blue flecks. This was green with golden.”

Mallow whirled around on his heel much more quickly this time and stared at the splatters of liquid on the wall and floor as if daring Draco to be right. Draco looked with him, _knowing_ he was right, and felt a surge of nasty vindication when he saw Mallow’s outstretched hand falter.

Then Potter’s limb fell still under him, and alarm replaced all other emotions. “Sir!” Draco said quickly.

Mallow held up his wand and bellowed, “ _Accio_ Stone Response potion!”

Draco winced. The Summoning Charm was almost never used in hospital, because of the chance of summoning a potion or special artifact just being used at that moment for someone who desperately needed it. But he tended to agree with Mallow’s obvious split-second decision that there was no one who needed the potion at the moment more than Potter.

The wall actually split around the flask that hurtled towards Mallow then. Draco blinked. He hadn’t realized the Healer was so powerful.

_Something to think about in the future, if I intend to irritate him further._

Mallow uncorked the flask in one smooth movement and spun around on his heel again, plunging the vial straight down Potter’s throat like a champion. Draco stroked the hardening arm beneath his fingers and prayed that the potion would be on time. He hadn’t seen Potter in years, didn’t owe the git anything but a pair of pathetic life-debts, and yet thought the world would change a little, and not for the better, with him gone.

Mallow knew his work. The passage in Potter’s throat spasmed, and then the arm beneath Draco’s fingers softened again. He looked down and saw the poisonous, fungus-white shade that signaled the approach of the marble retreating. He sighed aloud in relief and glanced over at Mallow, wondering whether he would blame Draco for this.

He found Mallow’s eyes locked on him instead. “You recognized the potion when I didn’t,” Mallow said, in a tone that could turn dangerous in an instant.

Draco decided that the best thing to do was stick to the truth. The entire room, and probably some of the audience in the corridor as well, had seen what really happened. Mallow wouldn’t be able to bury this or twist facts. “Yes, Healer,” he said.

“You only had a moment to notice it,” Mallow said, in the tone of someone building up to an accusation.

Draco reminded himself, again, that there were witnesses. Most of them didn’t like him, but he didn’t think they would lie for Mallow’s sake, either. The Healer wasn’t that popular. “Yes, sir,” he said, for some variety.

“You managed anyway.” Mallow twisted his thumb around the shaft of his wand and watched Draco for a moment longer. Then, abruptly, he gave a regal nod and turned away again. “Auror Potter shall know of your swift action. It saved his life.”

Draco blinked. His fantasy when he first came into the room, that he would somehow manage to save Potter’s life, had been fulfilled after all. He felt a bit dazed. “Thank you, Healer,” he said, which was luckily the proper response as well as the only one he had strength for right now. 

Mallow was already demanding to know who had brought the wrong potion. Draco suspected that he wouldn’t get an answer. No one would want to admit to such a catastrophic mistake. On the other hand, there were only a limited number of people Mallow would have trusted with access to his supply cupboard, so that narrowed down the number of suspects. The guilty one would be found and uncovered eventually.

Then Draco paused.

The potion that he’d flung against the wall didn’t look anything like the Stone Response potion. It wouldn’t have been easy to mix them up. Certainly none of the Apprentice Healers or journeymagi whom Mallow trusted with access to his cupboard would have done so. He always picked people who were level-headed and good in a crisis, with good observational skills.

On the other hand, they hadn’t had a crisis like this before, where the Chosen One might have died in front of them. Draco had felt the excitement and tension in the room, and he hadn’t been part of the core response team. Someone could have grabbed the wrong potion in a fit of nervousness and then not taken the time to look at it again as they ran madly along the corridors.

But…

He didn’t really believe that, Draco told himself. Maybe he was paranoid after all the attempts, both subtle and not, to sabotage him since he started training here. Maybe the fact that Potter had been cursed in the first place had made him start looking for shadows and attempts on Potter’s life that weren’t there.

But he still wondered what the potion had been, and when Mallow dismissed him, in the same absent way he would dismiss a dog who had done a favorite trick, Draco made sure to take a good look at the spilled potion, memorize its colors, and get a sniff of its scent, which was like sour honeysuckle. The potion wasn’t one he recognized, in itself unusual.

He was going to look up that particular potion, the minute he had a little free time, and see how it interacted with the Marble Walking Curse.

*

_I knew it._

Draco lowered the book onto the table in front of him and smiled at it. He was alone in the Apprentices’ Library, a grand name for what was really just a collection of books that the older Healers and journeymagi didn’t need at the moment. He was supposed to be cleaning beds on the second floor, but he had finished early and then slipped away before anyone else could drag him into some other task. If they found him here, he could always claim that he was improving himself with education.

The book in front of him was called _A Hundred Rare Potions,_ and the picture of the deep green potion with gold flecks in front of him matched, in every detail, the one that Healer Mallow had almost poured down Potter’s throat yesterday. Draco had flicked through the book until he found it by image, having no idea of the name, and the text printed beneath the picture had told him everything he suspected was true.

_The Wilder’s Growth Potion is highly dangerous and volatile and should be used only on those who are suffering from too long trapped in the Animagus form, as it pulls the human mind back from the animal and refocuses it on the language, memories, and habits that make us most human. In other cases, it will attack the body in search of the remnants of the Animagus transformation, and shut the body down by swift heart attack when it does not find them. It is particularly dangerous to use on patients suffering from other potions or spells that induce bodily change, such as Fleischer’s Flesh-to-Wood Draught, the Tree Imitation potion, or the Marble Walking Curse._

Draco nodded. It sounded as though the potion would induce swift death in any case, but it would have been especially fast, with no way to prevent it, if Healer Mallow had succeeded in giving it to Potter.

Now, of course, he had to wonder how the person who had tried to poison Potter had known about the Marble Walking Curse so soon after Potter was brought into hospital. The same person had to know that the potion was in Healer Mallow’s cupboard. 

The person Mallow had sent in search of the potion would have qualified on both counts, but what were the chances that that randomly chosen Apprentice or journeymage would have hated Potter enough to concoct a plan to murder him on the fly? If this had been prepared far in advance, it was still difficult to see how the murderer could have known that Mallow would be the one to treat Potter or that he would choose _them_ to send in search of the potion.

Draco shook his head. Yes, it was a puzzle, but he thought he could disentangle it. He felt somewhat responsible for Potter, now that he’d saved his life and paid back a life-debt (he wondered if Potter knew that yet).

And if he _could_ manage this, they wouldn’t have much choice about giving him journeymage status.

Draco was humming when he went to put the book away, which might be why he didn’t hear the other Apprentice Healer come up behind him until she said, “Healer Mallow wants you, Apprentice Healer Malfoy.”

Draco turned around and raised an eyebrow. Apprentice Healer Varden was one of the few people in hospital he felt superior to, because she had come in puffed-up and convinced she knew everything from merely reading books, and had learned quickly that she knew almost nothing. She was glaring at him with an expression of sullen resentment now that didn’t hurt his superiority complex, either. “Do you know what about?”

“You’ve been assigned some special task, that’s all I know,” Varden said, and hurried away, no doubt to go back to her important business of pillow-fluffing.

Doubtless, she didn’t realize how good the news of a special task sounded to Draco, or she wouldn’t have delivered it, Draco thought, striding towards Mallow’s office. This could be the first sign of a promotion, come at last!

*

“What are _you_ doing here, Malfoy?”

Draco let the door fall shut behind him and studied Potter for a minute. The cut across his face which Draco had noted when he was holding his arm down had been healed, but he still looked stiff and pale, and the hand he reached out as if he would pick up his wand from a table where nothing but his glasses lay shook.

Draco studied and noted all those minute details because they would be necessary for his task, he told himself defensively. Not because he was trying to stall and put off the moment when he would have to tell Potter the truth.

“I asked you a question.” Potter’s mouth was drawn up with disdain, his eyes so dark with it that Draco was sure he could have hurled lightning bolts from them if he was feeling a bit better.

“I’m your immediate caretaker,” Draco said, and carried the tray he held towards the bed. It contained tea for Potter, which included several thick slices of red meat. Draco knew that such nourishment was important after the Marble Walking Curse, which didn’t make it easier to pass patients who were on blander diets right now and see their envious glances.

“ _What_?” Potter was actually spluttering, something that cheered Draco up a bit. “Healer Mallow was seeing to me! He has before!”

That at least explained one part of the puzzle, Draco thought as he moved Potter’s glasses and put the tray down on the table. Potter had probably been assigned to Healer Mallow the instant he was brought in because of the prior association. Someone else could have known that, if they’d checked the hospital records well enough. 

“He knows that I saved your life,” Draco said quietly. “I assume that means he trusted me enough to give me this duty.” _Or wanted to see if I would fail._ Healer Mallow was the kind of complex man who tended to give people double-edged tasks like that. He hadn’t cared enough about Draco to do it to him before, but Draco had eyes.

Potter, oddly, sagged back against the pillows and stared at him for long enough that Draco dared to meet his gaze. He found it even darker than he had remembered, and Potter’s forehead now had long lines that cut across the old scar when he frowned.

“You did save my life,” Potter said. “Thank you.” And then, in the next breath, “But you’re probably going to tell me that trying to give me the wrong potion wasn’t a murder attempt.”

Draco would have dropped the tray if he’d had only his hands to support it, so he was glad for the strengthening surface of the table beneath it. “Er, why would I do that?” he asked, to get over the shock of Potter’s stream of thought traveling so close to his own. Potter _had_ changed; somewhere along the line, he’d grown a brain. Draco wondered if it had hurt.

“Because Healer Mallow did.” Potter smiled grimly. “He explained that the mix-up of the potions had been an honest mistake. He assigned an Apprentice Healer named Sabian to bring him the right potion, and he said he’s a young man and easily excitable. He grabbed the wrong one and didn’t dare wait because he knew that it was a matter of life and death.” 

Draco vowed to himself that he would remember Sabian’s name. He was a new Apprentice , and so not one that Draco had seen much of, because he spent far more time in class than in the mundane chores that occupied Draco’s time. “That doesn’t sound like a murder attempt,” he said, to spur Potter on further.

No matter how Potter had changed, Draco was still good enough to do that. Potter turned to face him, eyes brighter than before. 

“The wrong potion contained poppy seeds,” Potter said. “I’m allergic to poppies.”

Draco considered him skeptically. “But if the potion would have killed you anyway when it was administered in combination with that curse, why would the poppy seeds matter?”

Potter gave him a smile that made Draco bristle, because it was the exact same kind of all-knowing, wise smile Healer Mallow used too often. Potter, though, wasn’t as good as Mallow at noticing the signs of growing insubordination. He said simply, “They wanted to make completely sure. The same way that the Marble Walking Curse wasn’t the only one cast on me.” He raised a finger and traced the healing cut on his face. “This one was cast _after._ I have an enemy who likes to make doubly sure of his attempts working. This isn’t the first time he’s tried to kill me.”

Draco blinked. “So this enemy is also clever and quick enough to have learned about what kinds of potions Mallow had and who he would send in search of them?”

“I know he can do certain kinds of magic at a distance,” Potter said. “That might include Legilimency and the Imperius Curse. He could have fathomed Healer Mallow’s intentions and then corrupted the mind of the boy he sent in search of the potion.”

“You can’t do Legilimency at a distance,” Draco said. He probably shouldn’t have argued, but this was a subject he knew something about. “It _requires_ eye contact. The Ministry spent years practicing during the various wars with the Dark Lord to try and find a way to read his mind without facing him. Nothing worked.”

“And, of course, because the Ministry didn’t find any way, that means there must be _none_.” Potter sneered at him.

“Private researchers have worked on it, too,” Draco said coldly. “The hospital, for that matter. It doesn’t work. There have been experiments with potions, spells, passive magic of the kind that newborns have when they come into the world and that even Squibs can demonstrate if all they need is a lucky chance to save their own lives. Wandlore. Life-debts. Everything everyone could think of, because Legilimency would be so useful as a distance art. Nothing works.”

As he watched Potter’s face change, he remembered why he ought not to have said anything. Someone could be listening at the door—Draco wouldn’t put it past Mallow to assign spies so Draco didn’t accidentally kill the Wizarding World’s Savior—and wonder why a lowly Apprentice Healer knew so much about those things. Given the Malfoy family’s reputation for Dark Arts, it wouldn’t take a quick mind to make the connection.

Draco winced and waited for Potter to say something. It could be an accusation about Draco being a Dark wizard, or a demand for another Healer. Either way, he had just screwed himself out of a chance at a promotion.

“I see,” Potter said instead. “Thank you for telling me.” He leaned back against the pillow, never taking his eyes from Draco’s face. “I’ll have some of that food now.”

Draco slathered butter on the scones and handed the plate across, utterly bewildered. He would have let Potter do his own buttering, but his hand shook too much. Potter seemed to know that, because he grimaced and sighed but bit in obediently, the butter dripping along the corners of his mouth. Draco leaned back against the wall and contemplated him.

What had just happened? Had Potter been mature, sensible, and _intelligent_ for once? Merlin forbid.

Potter finished the scones and gestured for something else. Draco held out a banana, and Potter sighed again. “Something I can peel on my own,” he said.

“Right,” Draco said. “Sorry.” He reached for some of the meat instead, and Potter accepted them with a grunt and started eating. He ate like a soldier, Draco thought as he watched, like the Death Eaters he had seen eating during the war. It didn’t matter much if he liked the food, but it was a meal and he wasn’t going to waste it.

A shame, Draco thought. In the right setting, when he was around friends, Potter probably relaxed, laughed, smiled, and ate his food with more relish and better manners than he was displaying now. He might even be attractive.

_Attractive?_

Draco felt as if he’d swallowed a pound of iron. He shook his head so hard that Potter looked at him curiously, and turned to the door. Surely someone would come to relieve him soon? Surely Mallow didn’t mean him to be Potter’s only attendant? He would go mad if he was.

“I’d like you to help me, Malfoy.”

Draco glanced up, blinking. Madness or not, he did have a job to do. He nodded and started to reach for his wand to cast the Lightness Charm that would help Potter to walk. “You need to visit the loo? Sure. I—”

“ _No_.” Draco hadn’t heard so much flat and incredulous rejection from Potter since their Hogwarts days. Of course, he hadn’t seen him since then, either, so that wasn’t really a surprise, Draco thought wryly. “I can make it there on my own. I mean that I’d like you to be my eyes in hospital. I can’t really move from his bed, and it would look suspicious if I tried. Watch for someone trying to kill me. Gather information for me. The longer I remain here, the more I might tempt my enemy into trying again.”

Draco stared at him. “That sounds like excellent reason to leave as soon as possible.”

Potter sighed. He did that a lot, Draco thought. “No. I _want_ him to do that. He might reveal himself. He’s been getting more careless. And if he thinks that I’m weak and not recovering well, that might be another reason for him to let his guard down. But I can’t play that role and spy out everything I need to at the same time.”

Draco frowned. “I’m only an Apprentice Healer, Potter, and most of the people here don’t like me. There’s no reason for them to talk to me.”

“You still know a lot more about the hospital routine than I do,” Potter said firmly. “And you saved my life. That guarantees you a reason to be concerned about me, yeah? You’re my attendant. No one will question that you come to my room all the time and talk with me. It’s perfect.”

Draco opened his mouth to argue again—

And then stopped.

What was he _doing?_ This was his chance for promotion—a different one than he’d envisioned, sure, but still. And it was exciting, and it meant that Potter would take notice of him, maybe urge his promotion, maybe recommend him as a Healer to other people. 

Besides, Draco thought he could resist possibly going mad around Potter if he had a driving purpose.

He nodded. “Very well, Potter. It’s an alliance.”

Potter’s smile, he knew, would stay with him. And he did look quite handsome with darker eyes.

Not that that influenced Draco’s decision in any way. Of course not.


	2. Mystery and Merlin's Tears

_Chapter Two—Mystery and Merlin’s Tears_

“How is our hero today, Apprentice Healer Malfoy?”

Draco tried to stand a little taller in front of Mallow, who never looked up at him, but continued to sort through the parchments that occupied his desk. He frowned at one and cast it into the air, incinerating it nonverbally. Draco winced and hoped that Mallow was in a better temper with people right now than he was with paper.

“Recovering, sir, but not as well as I’d like,” he said, with a prepared frown. This was the first part of the plan he had worked out with Potter, and he was going to show Potter that he was a good actor and liar as well as Healer. “The curse seems to have token a heavier toll on him than it should. He still has trouble walking, and he’s short of breath. If we got all the magic out of his lungs, it ought not to be like that.”

Mallow gave Draco his full attention for the first time, and Draco had to fight not to wince away from the sheer pressure. “You need not recite symptoms of his condition to me, Apprentice Healer,” he said sternly. “I am familiar with them from more cases than you could count in a single afternoon.”

“Sorry, sir,” Draco said, and scowled at the floor. This was one of the reasons he and Mallow didn’t get along. Draco would innocently try to show off his knowledge, and Mallow would react as though showing off his knowledge was a bad thing. Sometimes, Draco thought Healers honestly preferred stupid Apprentices.

Mallow watched him for a moment more, then grunted. “I will give you potions from my own store to carry to Potter, Apprentice Healer Malfoy.”

Draco opened his mouth to say that he didn’t need them. Potter had told Draco that Draco could make him sound as paranoid as he wanted. If it served the plan and helped them capture his enemy, or prove the murder attempt in the first place—and Draco had to admit that he didn’t think it was a murder attempt _all_ the time—then Potter would approve it.

But Draco’s brain was sometimes quicker than his mouth. He thought of all the ways he could use properly brewed potions and free access to Mallow’s cupboard, and managed to say, “I’d be most grateful, sir.”

Mallow waved his hand in dismissal, and Draco moved off, wincing when he heard a minor explosion from behind him. Well, he wasn’t the one who had to clean the char and ash off Mallow’s floor. The Healers preferred to reserve Draco for the more disgusting menial tasks.

Draco had a definite goal in mind, and it helped him fly through his morning chores of changing beddings and bedpans and charming a young girl who vomited everything she was given into stasis until a team of multiple Healers could figure out what was wrong with her. Again, like the other day when he’d had time to study the potion, he was finished early, and made his way towards the classrooms on the ground floor with a confident stride. He carried a bucket full of yellow goop—the remains of Apprentice Healer Varden’s last attempt to brew the Draught of Peace—in one hand. The smell as well as the usualness of the task should keep people away from him.

When he got into the corridors between the classrooms, wide and full of light, Draco cast a Disillusionment Charm. There were wards elsewhere in hospital to detect such magic, notably on Janus Thickey, but it would pass unnoticed down here. 

Then he sneaked up to the nearest door and pushed it gently open. The Apprentice Healers ignored the door’s movement, and so did the Healer, Okono-Jones, rapt in the sound of his own voice.

Apprentice Healer Laurence Sabian was sitting in the back row of the class, eyes big as he listened. Everything about him was big, Draco noted, from his floppy head of blond hair to his clothes, which dangled over his ankles and wrists. In fact, he reminded Draco of the way Potter had looked when he first started attending Hogwarts, wearing large Muggle clothes he must have really liked for some reason.

Draco shook his head. Memories of Potter _would_ intrude into whatever he was regarding at the moment, and while it could be helpful to keep his mind on his task, it interfered with doing that task.

Several people had talked to Sabian already, he knew, including Healer Mallow. The poor boy was probably terrified. Draco had no reason to approach him the same way and make him hide anything he might know about the switching of the potions.

Sabian shifted in place. Immediately the two apprentices in front of him turned around to hiss a warning. Sabian blushed and started at his hands, which were knotting his sleeves in agitation.

Draco decided in an instant on his course. With any luck, it should work, because Sabian wouldn’t have been here long enough to feel himself superior to Draco.

*

“Could I speak with you for a minute?”

Sabian looked up in an instant, brown eyes as wide as they had been when he was listening to Okono-Jones. “I was just leaving,” he muttered, scooping up the can he’d been filling with water at the tiny sink jammed into an alcove near the Dai Llewellyn ward. “You can have the sink.”

Draco shook his head. “If you have to leave, I understand, but I’m not one of those ignoramuses who want to persecute you. I was going to say that I knew what you were going through.” He turned to wash the dirty sheets he held under the steady spray of warm water. Though a Cleaning Charm would scour them in an instant, most of the Healers insisted that water was more effective at reaching and removing all the tiny fragments of scab and blood and sweat that a patient could leave behind on the sheets. In practice, Draco waited until the water reached the point that steam was rising out of it and then used a much more powerful Cleaning Charm, one that he didn’t think anyone else in hospital knew.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Sabian hesitate and look around suspiciously, as if he assumed that the walls would leap at him for listening to sympathetic talk. But the walls must have stood upright enough for him, because he turned back around and asked, “What do you mean? _You’ve_ never displeased Healer Mallow the way I have.”

Draco chuckled dryly. “You mean no one’s ever told you about the time that I got sent a Howler in the middle of his class? You _are_ new.”

Sabian’s mouth flew open, and he mopped at a few strands of hair. That didn’t do anything but send them flopping back into place, Draco noted. “I can’t believe that! Who would send _you_ a Howler?”

Draco paused to study him. “You know my last name, right?”

“Well, yes, that’s obvious from looking at you,” Sabian said, immediately raising Draco’s opinion of him by several notches. Being able to recognize rare breeding at a glance was a sign of rare breeding in and of itself. “But still. If they let you into the Healer Program at all, they can’t be _that_ prejudiced against you.”

Draco sighed and sneaked his wand out to perform his powerful charm. He could do it nonverbally now, so many times had he cast it. “It’s one thing for them to let me into the program. It’s another thing for them to let me actually advance and have care of patients.”

Sabian tilted his head. “But you’re still here?”

“I make it a point not to let anyone drive me away from what I set out to accomplish,” Draco said haughtily, and with perfect truth. “I would have walked away from the program long since, but I decided on this. Let _them_ choke on it.”

Sabian stared at him with eyes like stars, and Draco realized abruptly that he had acquired a hero-worshiper of his own, of the kind that Potter used to trail around behind him all the time in Hogwarts. He blinked, then decided that he might as well keep the boy around. Sabian could go into the apprentice classes where Draco was no longer welcome. On the unlikely chance that the murderer would be hiding there, he could act as an extra pair of eyes.

“I have to remember that,” Sabian breathed. “No one can drive you away except yourself, right?”

“That’s right,” Draco said, feeling a thrill of intense enjoyment. If this was what it was like to have disciples all the time, then he could see why Potter put up with his own entourage. He drew the sheets out of the sink with an extra little shake that would free them of most of the water, and saw Sabian stare with his mouth open when he realized that they were clean already. Draco winked at him, then gave him a direct look. “You remind me a lot of myself when I first came in. And that’s why I know that you didn’t snatch the wrong potion from Healer Mallow’s cupboard, did you? I never would have made that mistake.”

“I _didn’t_ ,” Sabian said, his face bright with indignation. Draco found that preferable to fear. “He said it was the Stone Response potion, and when I said that I didn’t know what that one looked like, he said it was dark red with blue flecks. You can’t really mistake a potion like that, can you?” He turned appealingly to Draco.

Draco shook his head. 

“I didn’t think so,” Sabian said. “I _know_ I snatched the right one. And it was even in the right place, too, where Healer Mallow said it would be, on the highest shelf in the left-hand corner—the one farthest from the door of the cupboard.”

Draco nodded. That would be like Healer Mallow, to know his potions cupboard that well, and it would be another reason why he might believably trust someone as young as Sabian to get it, if he could give such precise instructions. “Then I believe you. You got the right one. Someone must have switched it along the way.”

“But I carried it all the time, and ran as fast as I could!” Sabian clasped his hands together in frustration. “How could they have done it?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Draco said carefully. “But were you looking at it again when you handed it to Healer Mallow? Do you remember what it looked like the moment he closed his hand over it?”

Sabian frowned. “I don’t.”

“Then it might have happened along the way. There are spells that could do that. Or maybe Healer Mallow switched it himself, as a test,” Draco added quickly, because Sabian’s face was turning pale. He didn’t want to inspire the boy to think too much of a murder attempt and thus possibly stumble on the reason that Draco was asking questions.

“Would he do that?” Sabian now looked appalled for a different reason.

“He has before,” Draco said darkly, looking up and down the corridor. “Though he tends to deny it.”

Sabian brightened as he realized that he was being fed insider knowledge. That should take care of his belief should anyone tell him that Healer Mallow had never done anything of the sort, Draco thought.

“I understand,” Sabian said. “I’ll remember.” He hesitated, then put out a hand. “You’ve been pleasant, and you’re the only one who’s talked to me like a _person_ since I came here. Thanks.”

Draco clasped his wrist, wondering why he remembered so strongly a pair of eleven-year-old boys at that moment, and a handshake that hadn’t happened. “Don’t you know? Apprentice Healers aren’t people. Not to the rest of them, anyway.”

Sabian laughed, nodded to Draco, and left. Draco went to take the sheets back to their destined bed, gnawing his lip. It did seem like Sabian was innocent, unless he was a much better actor than he looked—good enough to fool Draco as well as Healer Mallow and everyone else who had spoken to him.

Well. That didn’t matter. There were other possibilities. 

And Draco might as well go back to Potter with the evidence he’d collected so far and see what that fine Auror brain of his made of it.

*

“So the boy is convinced that he brought the right potion.” Potter swallowed the mouthful of porridge that had made his words disgusting to listen to with a deep frown. “That’s interesting.”

“But not necessarily conclusive evidence,” Draco pointed out, leaning against the wall. He was watching the waxy sheen to Potter’s skin and wondering how much of his continuing weakness was really an act. “After all, he could sincerely believe that and still be wrong. You can’t trust the perceptions of someone who wants to excuse himself from blame when he was under a lot of stress.”

Potter gave him a stern glance. “Who’s the Auror here?”

Draco bowed his head and swept out one hand in an apologetic wave. “Excuse me, O Great One. My pitiful attempt to offer a hypothesis is only that, a pitiful attempt. I will leave you to your contemplations.” He started to move towards the door.

“Stop, Malfoy.” Potter waved a weary hand at him. “You know that you still have more sense and brains than anyone else in this fuckhole of a hospital.” Draco choked at the language, but Potter didn’t seem to notice. “I just wish there was a way to know for sure what Sabian saw.”

“Well, there’s a Pensieve,” Draco said. “But I don’t know how we would get hold of one and convince him to give us the memory quietly.”

Potter paused, then smiled, a rather mean smile that made Draco wish someone else could see it. He wanted to show them that the Ultimate Hero of the Wizarding World wasn’t so perfect and spotless after all. “There’s a possible way. But it would involve bringing someone else into this, someone who might be rather hostile to you.”

“I live with hostility on a daily basis, Potter,” Draco said, rolling his eyes as he thought of the anonymous letter of hate that someone had delivered that morning. It was the usual drivel, about how his parents had done horrid things and he had done horrid things and how they would all pay someday. Draco had crumpled it up and tossed it into the bin where he kept such letters, which he would put on the wall someday when he was a full Healer, to remind himself of how far he had come. “How bad could it be?”

“It’s my partner,” Potter said. “Ron.”

Draco stiffened. “There’s hostility, and then there’s the very real chance that I might not walk away with my bones intact.”

“Ron isn’t like that anymore,” Potter reassured him hastily. He started to sit up and then slumped back with a little gasp of pain. Draco stared at him with narrowed eyes. Potter didn’t seem to notice; he was much too busy ignoring the signals his body was sending him. “He knows that your parents didn’t do half of what they were accused of, and he believes in your right to be free and work.”

“How confidence-inspiring,” Draco said.

Potter sighed. “He really _has_ changed. You don’t find me the same, do you?” He looked up at Draco as if he hoped to hear a negative answer to that more than he had ever hoped to hear anything in his life.

Draco had to look away. He could see why Potter made a good Auror, and an even better hero. Let him look at you with those eyes, and you would either back away or do everything for another look from them.

Draco couldn’t afford to fall too far under the spell, though. He was a Healer, or would be when certain people got their heads out of their arses, and he was interested in finding out who had tried to poison Potter and how, not Potter’s little interpersonal dramas. He forced himself to look back and speak sternly. “No. In particular, I think you’re paler and shorter of breath than you were yesterday. Have you been out of bed at all?”

“Huh?” Potter touched his chest after he had gasped, frowning. “No, except to go to the loo twice. Why?”

“Because something is wrong,” Draco said. “After you had the Stone Response potion and that cut on your face got healed, the Marble Walking Curse shouldn’t linger like this.” He took a step forwards and bent over so that he could listen to Potter’s heart, casting a spell that would enhance his hearing on the way.

Yes, Potter’s heartbeat was too fast, even considering he had just heaved himself nearly upright. And his fingernails had a bluish cast to them that made Draco hiss.

“What is it?” Potter twisted his head around to look at Draco, frowning. “So I’m still recovering from the curse. You were the one who told me that it would take a while and I wasn’t to expect miracles.”

“Not that,” Draco said. He jerked Potter’s hand up towards their faces. Potter flinched, and Draco rolled his eyes. “It’s your hand, you prat. See that blue around your fingernails? That’s a sign of a slow-acting poison, called Merlin’s Tears. It affects your heart and your lungs, making them labor more than they should to do the same amount of work. It’s very hard to detect when someone is already suffering from a condition that might legitimately give them reason to feel weak, the way you were.”

“But how—” Potter began.

Draco led his gaze to the food tray.

Potter stared at him. “Don’t you prepare the food?”

Draco shook his head. “I pick it up outside the same cafeteria where all the patients’ trays are distributed. The food is specially attuned to you to help you recover, but that’s all. Lots of people would have the chance to put something in it, and I didn’t cast any spells to check.” He felt sick over that failure now. Not to use the most elementary charms when he suspected someone of trying to murder Potter was foolish.

“How is the food prepared?” Potter’s mind was already ticking along in the direction of how to solve this, that was clear. Draco was glad for the sharp, thoughtful tone. It allowed him to pull himself together and answer clearly.

“By the Healers and Apprentice Healers on attendance in the cafeteria that day,” Draco said.

Potter cast him a quick, curious glance. “From the way you talk about Healers, I would have assumed that they’d never condescend to do work like that. Think it was beneath them or something.”

Draco blinked. He wasn’t aware that he had said all that much about Healers in Potter’s presence. Then again, Aurors were trained to investigate slight hints and pick up traces of a person’s real preoccupations from silence as much as sound. “They do,” he said. “Usually when they have patients under their care who have to have special diets. They don’t trust house-elves or Apprentice Healers to do that delicate work.” He didn’t care if the bitterness showed in his voice.

“Bad experience?” Potter asked quietly.

Draco shrugged. “You could say that.” It had been with Healer Edwhistle, who had moved to the Continent last year. In his own way, he had been even worse than Healer Mallow, who seemed to have a modicum of trust in Draco’s abilities, since he had given him the duty of caring for Potter. Edwhistle had simply thought Draco _had_ no abilities, and had taunted him constantly on the score.

Potter seemed to use those finely trained Auror senses to figure out further probing would be unwelcome, and simply nodded. “All right, then. Anyone who works in the cafeteria could have come by and put something in the food that would ensure it got to me.”

“Yes,” Draco said. “Not to mention that they put all the trays outside the cafeteria on common tables. Someone could have added the poison there. The amount of poison can be small and still have an effect—in fact, giving too much at once is undesirable, because it would cause the victim to die right away in a highly noticeable fashion—and it doesn’t smell. An experienced Healer could put in the right amount in under three seconds.”

Potter closed his eyes. “Fuck,” he said with feeling. “I didn’t realize how hard solving a case in hospital would be.”

Draco nodded gloomily. “There’s a test that I can perform to ensure that no more Merlin’s Tears enter your food. But I’ll have to do for every dish. It can mix with just about everything.”

“That’s fine,” Potter said, waving a hand. “I’ve had food tasters before.” He said it casually, and didn’t seem to notice the way Draco stared at him; his mind was already pursuing something else. “What about having access to the poison? Is it expensive? Would only certain Healers here have it, and others be required to prove a need for it if they wanted it?”

“It’s expensive,” Draco said, “in the fully-made form. But the ingredients aren’t, and you forget how many Healers are good brewers.”

“Fuck,” Potter said again, and drummed his fingers on his leg. “I’m glad that you’re around, Malfoy. It would be hard for me to figure this out from my hospital bed.”

Draco was glad that Weasley had shown no sign of himself yet. He didn’t want the git to witness Draco trying to pick up his jaw from the floor.

Of course, he thought a moment later, this was the way his life worked. It figured that when someone finally thought he was competent and began to praise him for his abilities, it would be Potter.

“The best course for now,” Potter said, “is to pretend that I’m weakening from the Merlin’s Tears, so they don’t try something else.” He rolled his head across the pillow to look at Draco. “I can just keep what I’m doing and it’ll fool them?”

Draco nodded. “I’d think so. With maybe a spell to create the blue patches on your fingernails, to fool anyone who might come looking.”

“If someone comes looking obviously, we’ll catch them,” Potter said. “But they could have spies, or they could come looking when I’m asleep. Cast the blue patches, will you? They won’t let me have my wand in here.” He grimaced, as if this was a special problem for him instead of a general, common-sense hospital rule.

Draco nodded slowly. “I might be able to fetch your wand for you.”

Potter stared at him with bright eyes. “You would? That would be _fantastic_!Someone who works here won’t expect me to have my wand, and I can cast the blue patches myself when your duties take you elsewhere.”

Draco cocked his head. There was something he had to ask in the face of Potter’s apparently infinite capacity for surprising him. “Why didn’t you ask right away about the long-term effects of the poison, Potter? Why aren’t you more worried about them? God knows I would be, in your place.”

“You would have told me if there was any long-term, dangerous effect,” Potter said simply. “You’re a Healer, and you’re the one familiar with the poison. If you didn’t react with screaming and hysterics, it was reasonable to assume they weren’t necessary.”

Draco bowed his head. The weight of Potter’s trust was exhilarating—and humbling. “I’m surprised you trust me that much,” he mumbled.

Potter was silent. Draco had to look up before he spoke. “I know that people can change,” Potter said. “I had that pounded home to me a few years ago. Yeah, I wasn’t thrilled about working with you, but I know you want to succeed at your job, and you’re making intelligent suggestions and trusting _me_ , too. That’s enough to recommend you.”

“Who wouldn’t trust the Chosen One?” Draco scoffed, to hide his relief.

“Don’t call me that.”

Apparently he had unwittingly stumbled onto a sensitive issue. Draco noted that Potter’s forehead had become lined with more creases, and his eyes for the first time in the conversation looked off to the side rather than directly at Draco. 

“All right,” Draco said, though he was burning with curiosity why that particular name should be so much worse than any other name that the press and the people around him had stuck on Potter. “So I’ll get your wand, and you focus on lying here and looking as sick as the person who poisoned you would want you to look.” He scooped up the tray and made for the door.

“Malfoy.”

Draco paused just inside the doorway and turned back, balancing the tray expertly. The first thing that Apprentice Healers learned in hospital was the importance of not dropping anything they were carrying, which could be food or delicate potions. “Yes?”

Potter looked as if he were struggling with the next words, and then finally came out with, “I know that you don’t understand why I trust you. I know that you don’t understand why I dislike certain of my nicknames. And I know that you’re _really_ dubious about involving Ron in this case.”

Draco didn’t think of it as a “case,” but he reckoned that Potter’s need for Auror terminology should be indulged. It would comfort him, and he was under enough stress at the moment without adding more. So he nodded and said, “All of those. So?”

“Just be sure that I have a good reason for all those reactions,” Potter said, and then turned his head away to stare at the wall like some kind of mysterious martyr. “Even if I can’t explain them to you.”

 _Well, at least part of the brooding hero stereotype is true,_ Draco thought, and nodded at his back before he let himself out. He hesitated in the corridor, then drew his wand and added a quick spell to the door.

It was nothing that anyone else would recognize, a highly personalized spell that Father had left behind in a note explaining what Draco should do after they fled the country. Father had described the spell’s incantation and effects, and said that it “might help.”

Draco agreed that it would. It was a tiny, passive charm that would do nothing but record the images of the people who passed it. Spells meant to detect wards wouldn’t detect it, since by definition wards were active defenses. Draco had used it several times to keep other Apprentice Healers from playing pranks on him or Healers from surprising him unpleasantly.

It probably wouldn’t be needed here, Draco thought as he turned away. After all, he doubted that a murderer as clever and skillful as this one seemed to be would come to Potter’s room personally after so many efforts to remain at a distance. But it could still tell him interesting things, perhaps, if he left it.

After three years in a place where he was more unwelcome than he could ever have been at Hogwarts or pure-blood gatherings after the war, Draco had learned the value of caution, and even of impulsive decisions—as long as those impulsive decisions served him and no one else.


	3. Visions and Voices

_Chapter Three—Visions and Voices_

“Malfoy,” a voice whispered to the side of him as Draco was leaving one of the few classes he was still allowed to attend, Advanced Curse Detection. “I found something out.”

Draco turned at once and went down another corridor without looking around. He knew the voice, and he trusted the boy enough to think he didn’t need instructions to follow. 

Sure enough, when he reached an empty room and turned around, Sabian was right behind him. He grinned at Draco and shut the door carefully behind them. “I found something out,” he repeated.

“What is it?” Draco deliberately made his voice authoritative. He wanted to encourage Sabian, but not in disrespect. It was fine for Sabian to address him without title—too many people had made a mockery of “Apprentice Healer Malfoy” for Draco to value the words—but the level of familiarity between them should be limited. Draco thought it would redound to Sabian’s benefit in the end, if he could think of himself as part of something greater and larger than a pair of conspiring Apprentice Healers.

His theory seemed correct, because Sabian’s chest puffed out and he took a deep breath before he said, “I found this near Healer Mallow’s Potions cupboard when I went to tidy up.” He held out a piece of parchment.

Draco took it and scanned it. It was a list of potion names, with the Stone Response potion among them. And then his heart leaped, because near the end of the list was the name of the Wilder’s Growth potion, the one that had almost poisoned Potter.

“Do you recognize the handwriting?” he asked, turning the list around so that Sabian could see it. “I don’t.”

Sabian shook his head. “I know it isn’t Healer Mallow’s, but that’s all. I don’t think it belongs to Healer Okono-Jones, either,” he added, with a certain ruefulness that probably indicated Okono-Jones had written copious comments on his essays. “And—is it evidence? Maybe it was just a list of potions that someone ordered for Healer Mallow or something.”

“Of course it’s important,” Draco said. “If nothing else, it proves that the potion you were supposed to get and the one that someone switched around on you were part of the same order. We might find someone who knows who had access to the potions.”

Sabian brightened up. “Yes, we might!”

Draco added a few more words of pleasure and praise, and then sent Sabian on his way. He floated out of the empty room as if he were walking on air, and Draco, watching from behind the half-shut door, was pleased to see Sabian glare at a few journeymagi who passed through the corridor at that moment and tried to force him out of the way with the usual absent-minded contempt that journeymagi showed Apprentice Healers. They looked offended, but Sabian just kept floating.

Draco chuckled. His smile faded when he glanced at the list of potions, though.

He had been assigned to Healer Mallow when he first entered the program, and he had cleaned the Healer’s office and around the Potions cupboard more than once. He’d practically had to create chores for himself, because Mallow was so scrupulously clean. There was no way that a piece of parchment like this would have been left lying about long enough for an Apprentice Healer to find, unless Mallow had left a few minutes before and dropped it on the way, and Draco knew he would have missed it soon and sent another apprentice to fetch it.

Draco was suspicious of clues that had a tendency to appear on their own.

But it would do no harm to find out whose handwriting it was, and who had ordered the Wilder’s Growth potion, which was less common than the Stone Response. Draco tucked the parchment into his pocket.

*

“You’ve got _Malfoy_ helping you, mate? Are you bloody mental?”

Draco paused inside the door to Potter’s room and rolled his eyes. He ought to have known this would happen the moment Potter suggested bringing Weasley into the case. He schooled himself to keep his temper—if Potter had changed and Draco could speak with him civilly, he should be able to do it with Weasley, too—and pushed inside.

“Good morning, Weasley, Potter,” he said evenly, and ignored the way Weasley swung around and stared at him. At least the prat couldn’t have a wand at this point in hospital; wands were taken off visitors as a matter of course. “I have your wand, Potter.” He held it up and tossed it to him across the room when Potter reached eagerly for it.

“You helped him get that?” Weasley asked, while Potter turned the wand around in his hands. Draco realized that he was watching Potter do that too intently and looked away, flushing. Why should the sight of Potter’s hands on the smooth dark wood bother him? He knew Potter wouldn’t cast a curse at him. “What are you playing at, Malfoy?”

“I’m _playing_ at nothing,” Draco said, with dignity that would have done Mallow proud. “I’m _being_ a Healer.” He turned to Potter. “How much does he know?”

Potter glanced up from the wand. “You can speak in front of Ron the way you would in front of me, Malfoy,” he said formally. “I’d trust him with my life.”

Weasley gave Potter a pleased, foolish grin. Draco ignored the sudden stab of jealousy that felt like a needle entering his heart. “I simply wanted to know so that I wouldn’t repeat things,” he said. “But when I tested this morning, the Merlin’s Tears were still in your food, Potter. I’ve removed every trace of the poison.”

“ _Poison_?” Weasley shot out from around the bed. “Why the bleeding hell didn’t you take the food away and give him another meal, Malfoy?”

Draco sighed. “For a number of obvious practical reasons, Weasley,” he said. “If I took the food back, they’d want to know what’s wrong with it, and we’d alert our would-be murderer. I can’t simply exchange it for someone else’s because the shortage of food for another patient would be noticed. The Healers keep track of such things. None of this has been easy, and finding the solution to the mystery won’t be, either,” He stared at Weasley. “Do you need that explained in smaller words?”

Potter reached out and laid his hand on Draco’s, though he could only keep it there for a minute before his weakness knocked it off. But he immediately replaced it, shaking his head. “Please try not to insult him.”

“Of course,” Draco said, maintaining a properly sarcastic tone even though he was struggling against his shock that Potter would touch him and use the word “please.” “The minute he stops threatening me.”

Potter turned his head. Draco couldn’t make out the expression in his eyes, but he said, “Ron,” in a voice that made Draco lick his lips.

Weasley glared at Draco for a moment more, then sighed heavily and turned away to kick the bed. Draco hissed at him, because that meant Potter shook and his breath whistled through his lungs. But Weasley didn’t notice. Draco was rapidly becoming of the opinion that Weasley wasn’t going to notice anything smaller than an eclipse. “Fine. I’m sorry.” Then he slanted a look at Potter. “But remember what happened the last time you trusted too readily.”

“I was thinking of what happened the last time I tried to give too much information to you, actually,” Potter said.

Weasley flushed, for some reason. Draco could feel his curiosity to know what they were talking about aching in him, but he would have to subdue it for the moment. He turned to Potter instead. “What else can you tell me about this murderer, his goals and methods? Anything we can figure out might help me to eliminate certain clues.” He remembered the parchment Sabian had found then, and took it out of his pocket. “Like this one.”

Weasley snatched it before Potter could, stared at it, and then frowned. “This just looks like a list of potions names.” Once again, he gifted Draco with a suspicious look. “Where did you get this, Malfoy? Why did you think it’s important?”

“Let me see,” Potter said imperiously, and took it from Weasley’s hand. He narrowed his eyes as he scanned it, and then glanced up at Draco. “Where did you find this?”

“My assistant found it,” Draco said, glad that Potter knew what he was talking about. He didn’t want to mention Sabian’s name in front of Weasley unless he absolutely had to. “In Healer Mallow’s room, near the Potions cupboard.”

Potter closed his eyes. “And it proves that someone did order the potions.” He tapped his fingers against the line that marked the Wilder’s Growth potion. “Does that mean we could trace this one after all, instead of assuming that my murderer brewed it?”

Draco shrugged helplessly. “Not really. This list doesn’t tell us who brewed it, after all, or where the order came from. And if Mallow or another Healer commissioned it from someone in-hospital, that still doesn’t tell us a lot. It could have been ordered for a totally legitimate reason. What I think we should focus on is Sabian’s journey from Healer Mallow’s office to your room, and how he started out with one potion but ended up with the other.”

“Sabian’s the boy you told me about?” Weasley asked, pointedly addressing his remark only to Potter.

“Talk to Malfoy, too, Ron,” Potter said without opening his eyes. “He’s helped me a lot on this case.”

Weasley turned the color of a brick. “The boy’s testimony doesn’t seem _that_ reliable,” he said stubbornly. “He was under a lot of stress. He could have mistaken one potion for another under the stress.”

“Healer Mallow doesn’t retain apprentices who do that,” Draco said. He was smug to watch Weasley open his mouth to try to refute that, and then close it again in frustration, realizing belatedly that it was a matter he knew nothing about. “No, I trust Sabian. The potions look too different, among other things.”

“Maybe _he’s_ the murderer,” Weasley said hopefully.

“Not possible.” Potter opened his eyes and sat up. He was speaking to Draco for the most part, Draco saw, with a shiver of pleasure that he didn’t try to hide. He was the only one who would know for certain what he was feeling. “My murderer is someone who knows enough magic that he could easily get a job anywhere; he wouldn’t have to go undercover as an Apprentice Healer. And Sabian has been here for some time, hasn’t he, Malfoy? He didn’t suddenly show up the day after I came here.”

Draco nodded. “Yes, he’s been an apprentice for at least three months.”

“The first murder attempt was six months ago.” Potter began to count it off on his fingers. “First, double Cruciatus Curses thrown at me during a raid, and it turned out later that none of the Dark wizards we captured had used that curse when we cast _Priori Incantatem_ on their wands. Then, two poisons—one of them meant to weaken my heart, the other actually stop it—slipped into my soup at a restaurant. The servers had been Confunded and couldn’t remember anything. Then two different kinds of poisonous snakes were slid under my wards, which aren’t meant to stop snakes.”

“Why not?” Draco demanded, appalled. It sounded as though Potter was seriously in danger of dying every moment he breathed. “I would have wards against animals around my house.”

Potter glanced at him and smiled for the first time in this discussion. “I don’t bother having those wards because I retain my Parseltongue, and I can speak to snakes. I’m sure my murderer didn’t know that, which eliminates him from being among the people close to me.

“But two is his mark, two of everything doubled so that there’s a second line of defense. The two curses cast on me during the battle fit that, and so does the potion, which would have poisoned me because of my allergy even if it hadn’t interacted negatively with the curse.” Potter shook his head. “I have to admire him. He’s clever, he’s skilled, and he’s ruthless. And I still don’t have any idea why, in particular, he’d want to kill me.”

Draco swallowed. He’d thought he was pretty courageous staying in hospital and resisting the taunts of the people who wanted to drive him away. It sounded as though an entirely different kind of courage—one Potter didn’t even call by that name—was needed merely to live Potter’s life.

Then he frowned and started to speak, but Weasley was already talking, and of course one had to defer to the Almighty Possessor of Red Hair, Draco thought. “What about that evidence we discovered at the scene where you were cursed, mate?”

Potter snorted. “We have no evidence that that’s _evidence,_ Ron. One chip of wood that might have come from a wand, or from a chair, or from a table. It’s more than we had before, but no one has managed to trace any magical signature to it, have they?”

Looking dejected, Weasley shook his head.

“Excuse me,” Draco said, a little gratified at the way Weasley promptly snapped his head around and scowled at him. “But if your enemy strikes in twos, then where’s the second component in your food? You’ve received Merlin’s Tears, but that’s only one poison. Where’s his second line of attack?”

Potter’s face contorted, and he swept his wand from side to side in a swift series of jagged motions that Draco’s eyes couldn’t keep up with. Two small, red embers of light blazed to life in his stomach and his chest. Potter looked up at Draco. “Can you tell me what this means?”

“If you can tell me what spell you used,” Draco said, moving closer to Potter. His heart was pounding furiously; he had a sick headache. This was obviously going to be one of his first real tests as a Healer, but he could have wished that it was easier.

“A spell that would detect any sleeper substances in my body,” Potter said. His voice was tight, but he must have caught Draco’s eye and understood his confusion, because he smiled and managed to make it look natural. “Sleeper substance is the term we use for anything that’s innocent until you introduce a catalyst. A base that won’t become poisonous until another ingredient is swallowed, for example.”

Draco nodded in recognition. “We call them latecomers in potions theory.” He poised his wand above Potter’s chest and the nearest dot of light, while thinking furiously. The latecomer would have to be something that passed unnoticed in Potter’s food so far, and yet didn’t interact with the Merlin’s Tears. The killer would probably have wanted to keep his poisons separate.

Luckily for Draco, there were a limited number of substances like that, and when he murmured the charm that would delve into Potter’s body and give him an image of the other man’s internal organs, he already knew what he was looking for.

The images bounced back to him, bright, irradiated pictures of Potter’s stomach lining and lungs that glowed on the backs of his eyelids. Draco smiled grimly. The learning of this spell always resulted in a few apprentices leaving the Healer program. If they couldn’t stand to see what their patients looked like inside, they couldn’t stay.

 _Yes._ Draco exhaled. The stomach and the lungs were both full of large, black grains like tumbled pieces of coal. They weren’t rough or irritating, so Potter had swallowed them without trouble, but the minute they came into contact with fresh fruit, they would flare and transmute into a poison called Peleus’s Revenge. 

Draco lowered his wand and glanced at Potter. To his surprise, Potter was looking at him intently but without fear, as if he thought that Draco would hand him some answer to the problem that would make it possible to solve this crime.

“He gave you the base of Peleus’s Revenge,” Draco said. “Nasty stuff. It turns the organs it lands in, usually the lungs and the stomach, into mincemeat.”

Potter accepted that with no more than a blink, although Weasley blanched. “In my food?” Potter asked quietly.

Draco nodded, and then glanced at the tray he’d brought in for Potter. There were apples on it, though he didn’t think the murderer had counted on that. The hospital liked to serve its patients fruit regularly, and sooner or later, the right catalyst for the poison would have come along and Potter would have died in screaming agony.

“When you ate the apples,” he said, “then you would have died.”

“It seems I owe you for saving my life yet again,” Potter said, and extended his hand. Draco clasped it, not sure what Potter was looking for, thanks or reassurance, and found out as Potter’s hand clamped down on his, shaking like dandelion fluff in the wind. Potter was fighting it as hard as he could, probably because he didn’t want to show it in front of Weasley, but he was frightened.

“Perhaps you do,” Draco said, and summoned his most arrogant smile. “You should be thinking about how you’ll fulfill my life-debts, when I claim them.”

Potter laughed at that, and released his hand. “What do I have to do to get rid of this poison, or the base of the poison, or whatever it is that’s actually inside me?”

“Drink a lot of water today,” Draco said, “and eat only meat and bread. That’ll help to flush it out. And believe it or not, your murderer has made a mistake.” He felt flushed and breathless, as though he had spent the amount of time chasing the murderer around that Potter and Weasley had. 

_Well, it’s understandable,_ he decided, after a moment of confusion. _I managed to outwit him, and he probably never anticipated that. He wouldn’t have used something so easy to trace if he thought there was a chance anyone would spot it._

“What’s that?” Weasley looked something other than nauseated for the first time. Draco gave him a scornful glance and wondered how he’d dealt with threats to his best friend’s life in the past, if he could barely stand this.

“The base for Peleus’s Revenge is rare and difficult to get,” Draco said. “You can only make it from the roasted cores of flowers that have been touched by a phoenix’s tail feathers. We’ll be able to track it down more easily than we can the Wilder’s Growth potion.”

“It could still have come from almost anywhere in hospital,” Potter murmured—not to be difficult, Draco thought, but because he wanted to point out all the obstacles so that they would understand the extent of the problem.

Draco nodded to him. “Yes, but in this case, I have contacts among the suppliers themselves.” He was grinning like a shark, he realized, and he didn’t care. “You’re lucky you came to me, Potter.”

“I know.”

Potter’s voice was soft, and his eyes waiting for Draco when Draco glanced towards him. Draco turned away swiftly. There was a depth of emotion in Potter’s face that he wasn’t ready to confront or think about yet.

_And might not ever be._

*

The letter that Draco sent to his parents described the situation in enough detail that he didn’t think he’d need to send a second. His contacts among brewers and apothecaries were, technically, Lucius’s contacts, but that had never mattered before.

His father sent an owl back to him, however, who arrived, weary and bedraggled and with ice on its wings, the evening after Draco let him know what he needed. Draco permitted the owl to stand on a perch near the fire and stroked its head while he read the letter through.

_My son,_

_Are you sure that you know what you’re doing? Whenever the Potter boy has been involved, things have gone very poorly for our family. I understand that he might have promised you his favor since you saved his life, but Potter has a limited amount of influence with those outside the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and his status fades with every year that passes since the war. I would see you consider your own advantage first, before you give in to romantic fantasies about what might happen if you manage to aid the Chosen One._

Draco sat there for a few minutes, quite still, his fingers resting on the crease of the paper. Was his father right? It was true that Draco couldn’t really explain his deep urge to help Potter. He might get advancement out of this, but Potter wouldn’t be able to force the whole hospital hierarchy into liking Draco.

On the other hand, a bit of manipulation, or simply asking Potter baldly to fulfill one of the life-debts, would ensure that Potter would do all he _could_ do. Draco had heard of Healers attached to Auror Departments. It might be possible for him to become one of those.

He wrote back to his father on the last of his best parchment, trying to keep his writing steady and neat so that Lucius wouldn’t suspect his hand to be shaking with emotion or anything of the kind. His father had a tendency to diagnose his feelings more from the ink blots and stains on the paper rather than the actual words.

_Dear Father,_

_I’m keeping the limitation of Potter’s position in mind. It’s true that he might not be able to coerce Healer Mallow or the rest into respecting me._

_But if no one will give me what I want even after I save the Chosen One’s life and increase the reputation of St. Mungo’s—which would be severely affected if Potter had died—then I’m inclined to ask Potter to find me a position with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and take my chances. Yes, I’ve fought long and hard not to leave St. Mungo’s and the Healers’ program. But there’s a difference between facing one’s enemies and butting one’s head against a brick wall. Going with Potter, no matter how it makes me look to the outside world, will ultimately be more productive than running against the wall many times._

Draco read his words carefully and was satisfied. When he looked at the owl, though, it practically cowered and looked at him with big eyes more suited to a dog.

Draco sighed. “Fine, you can wait until the morning to carry it,” he said graciously, and wondered what Potter would think of that. Would he be surprised by the sight of such compassion in a former Slytherin and a former enemy? Or would he laugh because Draco had given in to the wordless plea of an animal that had to do as he told it?

Then Draco rolled his eyes. _Why am I thinking of what Potter would think, anyway? It would be much more to the point if I started making a list of the clues that we have so far and trying to narrow down the murderer’s name from that._

He sealed his letter, laid it aside, and then found ink and a new piece of parchment. He determined that he would put down only facts first, and then information he was almost certain was factual, followed by speculation. Everything Weasley said would fit into that last category, he thought with a smile.

_Facts._

_One. The murderer has been trying to kill Potter for some time. This isn’t the result of a sudden grudge or an impulsive decision._

_Two. The murderer has good knowledge of Potter’s allergies, assuming that the use of the Wilder’s Growth potion was indeed a murder attempt and not a mistake. It seems to be, since it fits the murderer’s pattern so well, which is:_

_Three. He always uses two lines of attack, both meant to reinforce the other. One may be slightly more obvious than the rest, since the effect of Merlin’s Tears was visible while the Peleus’s Revenge was unnoticeable, but we can’t count on that (should go under “Speculation”)._

_Four. The murderer can take advantage of sudden chances and new opportunities, although he isn’t someone who chose to persecute Potter out of the blue. Otherwise, there’s no way to explain how he chose to substitute the Wilder’s Growth potion for the Stone Response potion._

_Five. The murderer has a good sense of the hospital’s routine and what can and can’t be altered, what will and will not be noticed._

_Six. The murderer must have powerful and versatile magic if he’s cast all these spells, including whatever spells put the Wilder’s Growth potion in Mallow’s hand, himself. Among the spells that we know he’s cast: the Marble Walking curse, the curse that scarred Potter’s face, the Cruciatus Curse, the spells that either conjured or tamed the serpents. He may have an accomplice or accomplices, but put that under “Speculation.”_   
_  
Seven. He tries again when one method fails, and probably counts on killing Potter by sheer persistence._

Draco paused and thought, but that was all he could definitely say. He had no idea what the murderer’s motive would be, and no idea how he had managed to get into hospital if he didn’t actually work there himself.

But one thing he thought he _could_ say, Draco decided, looking down the list with slow, clear eyes. This was no Apprentice Healer, although he might have apprentices working for him. This was someone who had years of capable magic and Healer’s experience behind him. They should look for him among the Healers—

And there Draco’s certainty faltered. The hospital _did_ have wards on it, mostly to detect the kind of dangerous magic patients might use, but the wards would also flicker into life and sound the alarm if any Healer was using it. How could someone who’d cast Unforgivables have come back to St. Mungo’s and slipped noiselessly, unremarked, into the routine? The wards should have detected the spells on his wand.

_There’s so much that we don’t know._

Draco gnawed on his lip some more, then shook his head and began his list of speculative facts. He would have to hope that Weasley and Potter could add more to it, or they would continue working blindly.

*

Draco cast a _Finite_ over the small, passive spell that he’d left on Potter’s doorframe, and stood silently for a moment while the visions it had trapped flooded his head. He was looking for someone he could blame for the murder—ideally, someone who had come in carrying a bloody knife and given Potter a look of insane hatred.

Of course there was nothing like that. There were the ordinary Healers and Apprentice Healers who had passed Potter’s room during the day, including Sabian, Varden, Mallow, and Okono-Jones. There were a few people who earned their keep in hospital doing tasks, such as mopping the floors, that the Healers hadn’t got around to assigning Draco yet. There had been visitors who went to the rooms down the corridor with no more than a few curious glances at the door behind which the famous Harry Potter lay. And there was Weasley, of course.

Draco sighed. No one except Weasley and he himself had actually gone into the room. Of course, the murderer had favored methods that would let him kill from a distance so far, except the curses cast on Potter during scenes of confusion when no one could say for certain who he was. Draco didn’t know why he had expected him to suddenly change his mind.

He opened the door, and then paused as something occurred to him. He would have to ask Potter about it.

Potter looked up at him from the pillow and nodded. His wand was in his hand, Draco could tell by the slight ridge under the blankets, but no one would notice that if they didn’t already know what they were looking for. “Hullo, Malfoy.”

Draco made sure the door was shut all the way behind him before he spoke. “Potter,” he said quietly. “Did Weasley come in here twice yesterday?”

Potter narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

“Answer the question, first,” Draco said, and slanted a glance at the door, wondering what would happen if he raised a privacy ward around it. There were spells in hospital that would react to most wards unless they were cast by a licensed Healer, or so he’d been told. But he’d seen other Apprentice Healers get away with this kind of thing in the past. Cautiously, he cast. The ward shimmered into place around the door with no problems.

“No,” Potter said. “Only once. Why?”

 _Very insistent,_ Draco thought wryly. _I wonder if he doesn’t trust me as much as he says he does, or whether he has to know everything, now, the instant it happens, so that he can make his own decision._ “I saw him passing the door twice,” he said.

Potter stared at him blankly, so of course Draco had to explain about the spell’s nature. He was doubly glad that he had raised the privacy ward now, since he wouldn’t want anything getting out about that spell.

Potter had a grim look by the time he finished. “No,” he said. “Someone could have cast a glamour to make himself look like Ron, or brewed Polyjuice, but I’ll swear that Ron himself didn’t come back, even during the times that I slept yesterday. I left spells that would have alerted me.”

Draco nodded, thinking he understood now why Potter had been awake every time he walked in. “Perhaps he thought he couldn’t fool you well enough.”

“I’m surprised that he didn’t take the risk anyway.” Potter’s hand clenched into a fist next to his hip. “He’s been daring enough for everything else.”

“Try to think, then,” Draco said quietly, and handed over the list of certain facts he’d made. “Do you know anyone who might fit this profile? Anyone who might have a grudge against you that would correlate with everything else? Anyone you arrested or nearly arrested in the past who could have the wits to carry out a plan like this?”

“We can eliminate most of the people in Azkaban,” Potter murmured, his eyes distant. “We can also eliminate the ones being held by the Ministry now. They could coordinate something like this, sure, or some of them could, but I find it hard to imagine that they would hire equally skilled proxies.”

Draco sighed. “I was hoping that you could chop it down further than that. Any rivals in the Auror Department? Anyone who publically swore revenge? Anyone who escaped your clutches and might be behind several crimes?”

Potter shook his head, frowning. “Ron and I tried to make a list like that. We ended up with nothing. Every single name belongs to someone who was pathetic and stupid, not someone who could actually make plans like this.”

“Or someone who _wanted_ you to think that he was pathetic and stupid,” Draco said, ever anxious to help.

Potter shot him an annoyed glance. “If we have to start thinking like that, then the list of suspects is never going to end.”

“Well, our other choice is someone so clever and careful that you never would have suspected him at all, because you’ve never heard of him,” Draco said. “Someone whose motive you don’t know. I can hardly imagine that that would be more inspiring to work with.”

Potter barked a laugh. “You sound like Kingsley.”

“In what way?” Draco demanded. He wasn’t sure whether he should be flattered or not to be compared to the man who had been Minister of Magic for one year and was now Head Auror. It might mean that he wasn’t strong and ambitious enough to keep his job.

Potter rolled his eyes. “Come off it, Malfoy. I only meant that Kingsley points out the limitations of my thinking with undue harshness, and you do the same thing.” He paused and glanced at Draco speculatively. “Not that I should really expect you to be much different, with our pasts.”

Draco shook his head. “We’re more than our pasts, or you would never have trusted me in the first place. What _does_ make you trust me, by the way? Weasley seemed to be referring to some specific incident yesterday.”

Potter looked thoughtful, and drummed his hand on the blanket in what Draco thought was merely a repetitive motion to fill up his thoughts, rather than a signal of something important. He wondered what Healer Mallow would say to the news that Draco was learning to read his patients so well.

Then Potter murmured, in an undertone that seemed to suggest he didn’t trust Draco’s protective spells or his own, “Something happened last year that convinced me not to take my first impressions at face value. In this case, those impressions would be the ones that told me you hadn’t changed and were still the sneering little schoolboy I knew.”

Draco tried to decide whether he was more offended by “sneering little schoolboy” or more interested in hearing Potter’s story. The interest won out, if barely. He gave a nod and a brittle smile and settled in to listen.

Potter shot him a quick look from under frowning brows, seemed to decide that he wasn’t going to get out of telling the tale, and sighed himself into compliance. “We had a man come to us and tell us that his wife had vanished and he didn’t know where she’d gone. But he was getting taunting letters, ones with weird, dark hints about how and why his wife might have been taken. It was—a hard case. I read the letters. They were more than odd, they were horrifying.” Potter wiped his mouth as if he was wiping off remembered vomit. Draco had seen other patients use that gesture when they were fresh off the cure for a Mucus-Vomiting Curse. 

“We worked ourselves to death trying to figure out who had sent them, and how they’d arrived. They didn’t come by owl, you know. They would simply appear on the table or the chair he was sitting at or a convenient other piece of furniture. I saw one materialize into being when I was guarding the husband in my office. No known magic could do that, and we investigated house-elves and unicorns and other magical creatures, too. It seemed hopeless. The man was being driven mad by the letters, and we didn’t want to think of what the wife was going through.”

Potter looked at Draco and sighed. “I identified with him, you see. I haven’t—haven’t _really_ lost someone I loved like that, but I could imagine it. And the terror every time a new letter arrived, and trying to work out what the person sending them might have meant by this convoluted phrase or that, was impossible to live through.”

“I’m impressed that you know a word like ‘convoluted,’” Draco murmured, trying in vain to lighten the atmosphere.

Potter only shook his head, refusing the admixture of comedy. “We were searching his house one more time, trying to figure out how someone could have kidnapped his wife, and we found a body. It was her.

“But even with his knowledge of that, the letter still kept coming. They didn’t stop until we called in a necromancer on the case, mainly to try and contact the wife’s ghost, so that she could tell us who had killed her and where the letters were coming from.”

Potter took a deep breath. “Her husband committed the murder. He wasn’t crazy. He thought he was justified because she hadn’t obeyed him. And then he thought the letters were coming from someone who had seen the murder and wanted to blackmail him. His ‘terror’ was guilt and rage. And I got fooled completely.”

He pushed his fringe out of his eyes and stared at Draco. “Since then, I’ve tried not to judge by my first impressions.”

He lapsed into silence. Draco cleared his throat. “Where _were_ the letters coming from?”

Potter smiled grimly. “His wife’s spirit was sending them. She wasn’t an ordinary ghost, like the ones that haunt Hogwarts, but a revenant, someone who comes back from the dead to avenge injustice. Of course nothing we could do would stop her. We tried her husband and put him in Azkaban for his crime, but he was mad inside the year. Ron disagrees with me, but it’s my personal opinion that she won’t let him die until he’s suffered as much as she did while she was still alive.”

Draco grunted. “I hope that you’ve also had experiences which tell you that you can _trust_ people.”

Potter blinked and came back from whatever dark wasteland his mind was wandering. “Of course,” he said mildly. “I would let you know if I thought it was impossible to trust you. And I haven’t said that, have I?”

Draco shook his head. “No, but the way you respond makes me wonder why you do trust me. You’ve said you have. I believe that you do. I just wish I knew _why_ ,” he added with a wistful tone in his voice that he didn’t think he would be completely able to hide or avoid. “The same way I wish I knew an answer to this mystery.”

Potter didn’t ridicule him for comparing the identity of a murderer and the reason that he’d leaned on Draco. He studied him instead, until Draco cleared his throat and shuffled his feet, thinking there might be good things about the ways that the Healers tended to ignore him.

“Do you have anyone who works in hospital that would know you?” he asked. “Anyone who might be hired by or working with your murderer? Who knows about your poppies allergy, for example?”

“I’d like to tell you,” Potter murmured. “But I’m afraid the evidence is scanty. It was a matter of convenience, because you were the Healer tending me, and I knew you well enough that I didn’t think _you_ hated me any longer. You probably would have refused to be my Healer if you hated me, and instead you were almost pathetically eager for it.”

 _“_ All _right,_ ” Draco snapped. “Feel free not to reveal any more details.”

But Potter went on murmuring, paying no attention to him. “There was something else, though. You had a sense of familiarity about you. I felt comfortable with you in a way that I usually only am with Ron, Hermione, Neville, or someone else I’ve known since we were children. That must be it. I knew you at Hogwarts, and that combined with the convenience factor to make me reach out.”

Draco coughed. Well. He had an answer, if not the one he’d expected. Of course, he had no idea what answer he’d expected anyway, so he had no reason for his vague disappointment. “Fine. Then—”

“But there’s more still,” Potter continued. “I told you that I no longer trusted my first impressions, but I’ve had the chance for second, and third, and fourth impressions of you since I’ve been in hospital. You’re honestly concerned for me. You don’t flinch from tasks that I’d think you would find disgusting, like taking me to the loo or changing the sheets on a regular basis.”

“All the Healers are trained to be unflinching about things like that,” Draco snapped. He was on the defensive and had no idea why. “You might as well trust anyone, including the person who’s probably trying to kill you.” He refused to give up his idea of Potter’s would-be killer being someone who was familiar with the routines of St. Mungo’s until he had to.

Potter went on dreamily. “You’re fighting some kind of interior battle—that’s obvious from the way that your shoulders are always tense and your smiles always bitter—but you don’t let it spill out on me. You identified the poisons and gave up your own time to talk to me about them and what I could do to avoid them.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Just consider how it would look if the great Harry Potter died on my watch, and I’m sure that you’ll see why I was so insistent about that.”

“I’ve considered that,” Potter said cheerfully. “I decided it’s an insufficient motive for your kindness.” He spread his hands. “I can’t give you satisfactory answers to all your questions, but the one that I _can_ give? I trust you because you seem trustworthy.”

There was a tone in his voice as he spoke, a deepness and a passion, that went, inconveniently, straight to Draco’s groin. He bit his lip and turned his head, taking deep breaths so that he could subdue his desire. He couldn’t react like this. It was just a tone in a _voice,_ for God’s sake.

“I’ll take that for now,” he said shortly. “In the meantime, try to think of anyone with Healing skills or Healer relatives who you might have angered. What is Weasley doing?”

“Looking at the evidence from the outside,” Potter said. “In the Auror Department and at the scenes where I was cursed. Even near my house, though the snakes were sent through my wards weeks ago and I don’t think he’ll find anything.” He smiled at Draco. “I’ll consider your lists, thanks. You keep working on the apothecaries and on keeping me safe.”

Draco nodded and then left the room. He was rattled and had to spend a few minutes wandering up and down the corridors before he could relax.

Potter had given him honest answers to his questions. Draco found them inadequate and threatening at the same time.

 _Potter ought to trust less if he wants to save his own life,_ he thought, and told himself that was why he was dissatisfied.

It wasn’t. But he couldn’t explain the source of his dissatisfaction any more than Potter could explain the source of his trust.


	4. Apothecaries and Answers

“Fill this order for me, Apprentice Healer Malfoy.”

Draco grimaced as Healer Farion thrust the list of ingredients into his hand. She was an older woman who never seemed to take notice of the apprentices or even journeymagi except as bodies to do her bidding. Draco preferred that attitude, sometimes, to the scorn and superiority complexes of some Healers, but it was particularly offensive just now. He had been casting Cleaning Charms on the hospital windows, yes, but his mind was busy with possible solutions to the mystery surrounding Potter.

It was pure luck that he managed to glance down at the list and recognize the handwriting there before Healer Farion got out of sight. She had a brisk stride and had nearly reached the corner of the corridor. Draco swallowed his shock and raised his voice.

“Healer! Can I know who wrote this for you? The last time I went to the ingredients stores, they asked me that,” Draco added, lying his arse off. But since he was skilled at lying and the Healers never dealt with the lesser functionaries who controlled Potions ingredients when they could get someone else to do it for them, he was fairly safe.

Farion sighed and stared over her shoulder at him, giving, without effort, the impression that he’d thoroughly disrupted her Very Important Thoughts. Draco admired the effect and memorized it to copy at a later date. “It was Apprentice Healer Varden, Malfoy, if you _must_ know. Now, don’t hesitate any longer. I doubt that even you would appreciate patients dying because of your laziness.”

She vanished, and Draco scowled at her back. So she did share the common attitude towards him as a jumped-up Death Eater. Well, that was good to know in case he had to come into closer contact with her.

He looked back at the list of ingredients and raised his eyebrows. 

The handwriting was the same as that on the list of potions Sabian had found near Mallow’s Potions cupboard.

*

“It doesn’t sound good, Harry. Malfoy.”

Weasley broke off in the middle of his report, or whatever it was, to Potter so that he could scowl at Draco. Draco raised his eyebrows back and pushed the tray of food into the room. There, he cast the charms that would find the Merlin’s Tears and any sign of the base of Peleus’s Revenge. He didn’t find anything, and handed the plate of chicken and bread over to Potter with a magnificent nod.

Potter caught his eye with a stare that said he knew what Draco was doing in regards to Weasley and didn’t approve of the increased dramatic gestures. Draco looked back innocently and pulled out the list that Healer Farion had given him. He’d cast a Copying Charm on it and given the copy to the keepers of the ingredients cupboards. That way, Farion couldn’t say that he hadn’t done his duty, and Apprentice Healer Varden, if she was watching, wouldn’t detect anything suspicious in his movements.

“What is this?” Potter said, but luckily he grasped the significance at once. “That handwriting looks the same as on the other parchment.”

Draco nodded. “And one of the Healers told me that the handwriting belongs to an Apprentice Healer called Varden.”

“That’s our murderer, then.” Weasley leaned back in his chair, looking so cheerful that Draco almost felt it would be a shame to tell him the truth. Almost. “Should have known that it would be easy to find once we applied ourselves.”

Draco started to snap back to correct him about who had done the work and applied himself, but Potter interrupted him, still faithfully maintaining his role of peacemaker. “If he’s an Apprentice Healer, then he won’t have the necessary level of skill to brew all these poisons and cast all these spells, will he?”

“She,” Draco said. “And no, I don’t think she would. Unless she was concealing her real level of skill, but all the Apprentice Healers are tested for the strength of their magic when they enter the program. It helps the Healers to know what tasks they should assign us,” he added, remembering smugly the moment when his own magic had tested as strong and the confounded faces of the Healers who had examined him. No doubt they had imagined that it would be easy to assign Draco to the lowest ranks of the program or kick him out altogether.

Of course, the truth of Draco’s magic hadn’t stopped them from doing the first.

Draco ground his teeth so that he wouldn’t have to think about that and refocused his attention on Potter’s face. “Do you want me to talk to her?”

Potter peered at him. “Does she like you? Would such an action stand out as suspicious to the watching eyes of our murderer?”

“Not that Malfoy’s any great loss,” Weasley muttered.

Potter whirled around before Draco could react, even though he had to keep his shoulders against the pillow and so barely seemed able to do it. “That’s enough, Ron,” he said in a low voice. “If I hear you talking like that again, you’re not going to be welcome in my hospital room unless you have information bearing on the case.”

Weasley stared with his mouth open. Draco did, too, but managed to close his before Weasley did. And anyway, his surprise was the pleasant astonishment of hearing himself defended. He didn’t think Weasley was feeling anything like that.

Which added to Draco’s pleasure, of course.

“Mate,” Weasley whispered, as if the single word would remind Potter of everything they had shared and survived together—which was probably a lot, Draco thought, able to be charitable in his triumph. “Remember who I am? Yeah, Malfoy’s your Healer, and a pretty competent one, but I’m _Ron_.”

“I don’t want you denigrating him,” Potter told Weasley, raising Draco’s opinion of his vocabulary a second time. Potter didn’t move again, and Draco wondered if Weasley realized how much his previous motion had taken out of him. Probably not, if the way Weasley cowered was any indication. “He’s saved my life at least twice, three times if you count recognizing the second poison the other day. He’s trying to help us solve the mystery even though it could put _his_ life in danger. He’s changed, and if you imply otherwise again, I’ll hit you.”

Not the most impressive threat to Draco, but Weasley seemed to regard it in a different light. He bobbed his head hastily. “No problem, mate,” he said. “I promise.”

Potter smiled at him, and there was a tenderness in the smile that burned Draco’s triumph to ashes. “I know, Ron,” he said. “I’m sorry for saying that I’d hit you. I just wanted you to get over this stupid rivalry before it made what we’re trying to do even more dangerous.”

Weasley caught Draco’s eye and gave him a hard stare, then glanced back at Potter and nodded. “I understand,” he said. “Fine. Well, then. What are we going to do about this Apprentice Healer Varden, if Malfoy can’t talk to her?”

“There are other ways to approach her,” Potter said, and looked significantly at Draco. Draco wondered if Potter wanted him to suggest something, and swallowed through a tight throat.

Of course he did have a plan a moment later, his intelligence surging to his rescue as it always did. Draco’s brain wasn’t about to fall down on the job in front of a Weasley. “Sabian,” he said. “He’s also an Apprentice Healer, and he’s been here a shorter time than I have. He could approach her and flatter her, pretend to really want to know her opinion on some Healing technique. He could make himself believable.”

“This is the boy who claimed that he had no memory of how the Wilder’s Growth potion got into Mallow’s hand?” Weasley shook his head. “How do we know that he and Varden aren’t in it together?”

“We don’t absolutely _know_ it, if by that you mean have definitive proof,” Draco said, and fought to keep from rolling his eyes. “But I trust Sabian. I don’t think he could have acted this way around me as long as he has without betraying himself, if he was insincere. Besides, he was the one who brought me the first parchment that had Varden’s writing on it. Why would he betray her if they were confederates? The killer’s biggest advantage is surprise, and it would be better for him—or her—if we didn’t have any clues as to their identity. No, I think the parchment is a false clue in the first place and Varden is innocent. But she still might be able to tell us something, if Sabian approaches her in the right way.”

Weasley blinked and craned his neck backwards as if he thought that viewing Draco from another angle would make him make more sense. “You’re right,” he said, sounding surprised. “You _can_ use logic.”

Draco suppressed the temptation to say that he had thought the Gryffindors’ whole problem with him was his excessive use of logic and his refusal to succumb to their messy emotionalism, because Potter was nodding. Both Draco and Weasley knew who the real center of power and authority in this room was.

“Use Sabian, as long as you think that he won’t betray his association with you accidentally because he’s enthusiastic,” Potter said.

Draco shook his head. “He’s proud to be part of something big and secret. I’ll send him to interview Varden, and he should have results for me no more than a few days from now.”

“Good,” said Potter. “In the meantime, what about the apothecaries that you were going to contact to see who might have sold the base for Peleus’s Revenge?”

Draco coughed. He could feel his face turning red. He would have to say that he didn’t have the answers yet, which was the truth, but how he was supposed to say that he didn’t have them because his father thought Potter too dangerous for his baby boy and had wanted to caution him?

“He’s hiding something,” said Weasley, who was suddenly a genius at the time that Draco least wanted him to be. “What is it?” His wand was in his hand, and he fiddled with it, not quite raising it to point at Draco but not putting it away, either.

Draco sighed and turned to Potter. “My father is the one who will contact the apothecaries for us. And last night—well, he didn’t want to because he wanted to send me a warning letter instead.”

“A warning?” Potter’s eyes were narrow as if he were reconsidering his alliance with Draco. Draco hoped he wasn’t.

“Yes.” Draco’s face flushed worse than ever. Weasley snickered. Draco tried valiantly to ignore it. “He wanted to caution me about getting involved with you. He says that’s never ended well for our family.”

To his amazement, Potter didn’t join in Weasley’s loud snorts of laughter. Instead, he considered Draco gravely and then nodded.

“I know that your parents love you,” he said. “I could see that when your mother lied to Voldemort to save you. It was only superficially to save me,” he added, as if talking to himself. “All I can do is say that, this time, it’s going to be different. Thank you for being honest with me.” And once again he stretched out a hand.

He did that a lot, Draco thought as he reached out slowly in return. Perhaps he knew what the gesture of a refused hand had meant to Draco and was trying to make up for it as best he could.

Or perhaps it was just a natural gesture for him and he had no idea what Draco was thinking. That was more likely, Draco thought, gazing into Potter’s big, bright, guileless eyes. Potter was intelligent, but Draco didn’t think he was as calculating as thinking all the time about his gestures would have implied.

Besides, why should he think that way about Draco? Why should he try so hard to put himself in Draco’s place, and see through his eyes? This would end, they would find the murderer, and Draco would receive his promotion, either in St. Mungo’s or as a Healer attached to the Auror Department. They would never see each other regularly again.

Draco licked his lips and surprised himself with a wish that that wouldn’t happen, that this would somehow lead to the forging of a lasting friendship—unlikely as that seemed.

He became aware that he was holding Potter’s hand like some little girl and dropped it hastily. Potter frowned. Draco turned to the side, ignoring him. “Anyway. We should have the information from the apothecaries by tomorrow. I think the ones close to hospital would be more likely to have sold the base, but we don’t know that. Perhaps your murderer would have bought it further away to throw off suspicion.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call him Harry’s _murderer_ , Malfoy,” Weasley muttered with a green face. “That makes it sound as if he’d succeeded.”

“I understand what you mean, and it’ll do in the absence of any other name,” Potter interrupted smoothly. “Thank you, Malfoy. In the meantime, why don’t you send Sabian to talk with Varden, or at least tell him that we need him to?”

Draco nodded and left the room, trying not to mind too much that Potter and Weasley would have some time alone that way.

*

“Malfoy.”

Once again, Sabian had managed to approach unobtrusively. The boy might have a career as a spy if being an Apprentice Healer didn’t work out, Draco thought. He kept his own eyes away and pretended to be absorbed in stripping sheets off the bed a patient had just left. “Yes, Sabian?” he whispered.

He could feel Sabian turning to glance at the door into the corridor and make sure it was shut. Draco himself kept up with his chore, apparently interested in nothing else, while Sabian ranged further into the room as if he were looking for possessions the patient might have left behind. People who were here for a while had a habit of doing that, and Mrs. Bredon had spent three weeks here, recovering from werewolf scratches that luckily hadn’t managed to turn her.

“Varden says that she knows nothing,” Sabian murmured. “Or, at least, she didn’t say that, but I could tell what she meant.”

“How did you get her to talk about it?” Draco lowered his voice further when he heard the clang of a bucket being dragged over the floor outside. The hospital’s administrators, in their relentless desire to do good, employed a Squib as caretaker on this floor in much the same way Dumbledore had employed Filch. Haagedorn was younger than Filch, which meant he had much better ears. “I hope you weren’t obvious.”

“Catch _me_ being obvious,” Sabian muttered.

Draco bit his tongue. He had almost reminded Sabian that, a short time ago, he’d been as big-eyed and helpless as Neville Longbottom. But that wouldn’t have been a good thing to do when he was just gaining in confidence.

“No,” Sabian continued, “not at all. I led the conversation around to Healer Farion first, and said that I’d heard she was hard to work for. Varden acted haughty and said that someone like me would find it hard, but _she_ didn’t. Then I went slowly towards Healer Mallow. I was trying to figure out whether she had left the list in his room, whether he had told her to write it, and whether leaving it there was accidental or not.”

Draco nodded reluctantly, impressed in spite of himself. Those _would_ all be good things to know, assuming that they could actually get the information and verify it.

“She ended up saying that Healer Mallow did have her write the list. He wanted a record of what potions he’d ordered in the last month, so that he wouldn’t replenish them accidentally by ordering more than he needed.”

Draco opened his mouth and then shut it again, but he didn’t think he could keep from frowning. That lapse didn’t sound like Mallow. Draco had always thought that he had the contents of his Potions cupboard memorized. Witness the way he’d been able to direct Sabian exactly to the place where the Stone Response potion was.

But on the other hand, Draco had also seen Mallow, under stress, fail to notice that the Wilder’s Growth potion wasn’t the Stone Response potion. And Mallow had worked with several stressful cases in the last few months. Perhaps Draco shouldn’t blame him for this. Perhaps there was nothing suspicions in it.

_Maybe._

He nodded for Sabian to continue.

“She didn’t know what had happened to that list. Someone could have stolen it from her desk and dropped it on the floor, she said. But she accused me of lying when I told her where I found it.”

“You told her where you _found_ it?” Draco raised his voice, though he still didn’t turn around and look at Sabian. “That was a stupid thing to do.”

“No, it wasn’t!” Sabian said, with such passionate indignation that Draco was reminded of how young he really was. “No one knows that we’re working together. And everyone who glanced at the list of tasks would know that I was assigned to clean Healer Mallow’s room. Really, I think it would be more suspicious if I hadn’t said anything about it and she had known that it was missing.”

Draco blew out his breath. “Sorry,” he said shortly. He’d never liked spending more time on apologies than was necessary. “How sure are you that she’s telling the truth?”

“Relatively sure,” Sabian said with cheerful confidence. “She can’t lie very well. She comes out all in spots when she tries.” He snickered. “You should have seen what she looked like when she tried to tell Healer Okono-Jones that someone had stolen her homework.”

Draco nodded with a frown. It seemed that that clue was a dead end. It didn’t lessen his suspicions that someone had left the parchment on the floor of Healer Mallow’s office for them to find, but it did convince him that there was no good in suspecting Varden of writing it deliberately as part of a murder plot.

“Are you going to have me do anything else?”

Draco blinked and looked at Sabian. He had a bright, cheerful smile, and he had stopped paying attention to the door. He watched Draco instead, like a dog waiting for a treat that it knew a human had tucked into his pocket.

 _This is the problem with hero-worship,_ Draco thought. _It’s hard to make people understand that sometimes, you’ll simply have nothing important or special for them to concern themselves with._ He felt a sudden surge of sympathy with Potter that he had never expected to feel—or at least never on such a topic. 

“Yes,” he said abruptly. He hadn’t planned on this, but there was another area where Sabian can be useful. “Try to find out who’s seen Ron Weasley since Potter was admitted to hospital. If he’s visited any rooms, spoken to any patients or Healers, or done anything unusual.” Since Draco still didn’t know what to make of Weasley’s double appearance at Potter’s door and Potter seemed disinclined to investigate it, Sabian could do it.

Sabian smiled—no, _beamed_ —at him and then practically bounced out the door. Draco leaned back against the bed and thought for a minute about whether he should have had Sabian do something else, something that wouldn’t make Potter angry if he found out.

Then he shrugged. His business was to save Potter’s life, as his Healer. That included investigating things that Potter might be angry about or at least not approve.

And if he could find some way to pin this on Weasley, then Draco would have to admit to a private satisfaction that Potter didn’t need to know about, either.

*

“Malfoy. I’d like to see you a moment.”

Draco froze, and then forced his shoulders to relax as he followed Mallow into his office. Mallow sat down behind his desk and seemed to be absorbed in looking for something specific in his pile of parchments. Draco stood in front of him with hands clasped behind his back and a quiet expression on his face.

At least, he thought it was quiet. His father had often told Draco that he didn’t have as perfect a control over his emotions as he thought he did. Draco hoped it was working this time, or else that Mallow wasn’t as good a reader of faces as Lucius.

Mallow finally looked up and extended a piece of parchment. “Read this carefully,” he said. “Don’t react at once. Considering the source, I thought it should merit your extended consideration.”

Draco stared at the Healer before he stared at the parchment, but Mallow simply linked his hands together across his stomach and offered Draco an inscrutable look. He seemed to be trying to decide what he should believe, Draco thought, and glanced down.

The words on the parchment concerned his treatment of Potter, and proceeded in long, sprawling sentences to condemn Draco for interfering too much, spending too much time with Potter instead of on his other chores, insulting Potter’s friends, and, basically, being an Apprentice Healer where a full Healer should have been assigned, for Potter’s safety and the reputation of the hospital if nothing else. Draco read all the criticisms attentively, and then the signature at the bottom. _Ronald Weasley._

“What do you have to say to this, Apprentice Healer Malfoy?”

Draco glanced up. “They’re serious accusations,” he said calmly. “Do you believe them, Healer?” He remembered just in time that he probably should try for more anger than he actually felt now, and allowed himself to crumple the edge of the parchment.

Mallow chuckled. “That isn’t the question. When they come from a friend very close to the patient, we may have to deal with them even if we don’t believe them. That was one of the first lessons I gave you, and it remains true. More true, even, when dealing with a patient of Potter’s stature.”

 _Yes, maybe,_ Draco thought, and smoothed his fingers down the crease in the parchment. _But this isn’t Weasley’s handwriting, and it also isn’t his thought process. He’d accuse me of being evil and have done with it. Besides, how much does he know about the hospital routine? Would he be able to accuse me of neglecting my chores? Would it occur to him to do so?_

“How did you receive this, Healer?” he asked aloud. “Did Weasley submit it himself?”

Mallow shook his head. “It was on my desk when I came in this morning.”

 _Interesting._ Mallow always kept his door locked when he wasn’t present in the office, and trusted the unlocking spells to his apprentices alone. That suggested a Healer, again, someone who knew enough about the hospital’s wards and Mallow’s habits to slip in when an apprentice was busy in the back, near the Potions cupboard.

Or an Apprentice Healer could have done it himself, of course.

Draco glanced down again. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed as though the handwriting was the same on this document as on the list of potions Sabian had found. But that meant nothing if it wasn’t really Varden’s. Draco knew that people could disguise their handwriting or copy someone else’s with a few complex charms. A lot of the “evidence” against his parents had been forged that way.

“I think you should confront Weasley,” Mallow said, leaning forwards. “Get it over with. I don’t plan to change your assignment to Potter. Speaking to him should force him to offer evidence, and if he can’t, you’re cleared.”

Draco shook his head. Speaking to Weasley would just stir up ill-will. “Why don’t we ask Potter, sir? He’s the patient. He’s in the best position to make accusations against me.”

Mallow frowned at him. “And you’re not afraid that he would take his friend’s side? Speak up for him no matter what had happened, and condemn you?”

Draco smiled slightly as he thought of Potter’s words about trusting Draco, and why he did. Those words would sound strange to an outsider, and Draco didn’t plan to offer them, but there was no reason that he couldn’t rely on them and use that strength to make both his voice and his face innocent. “No, sir. He’s borne with me this long. I think he would have told me before now if he was dissatisfied.”

Mallow subjected him to another hard, piercing stare. Draco made sure that his eyes were more innocent than ever.

Mallow at last grunted and leaned back in his chair. “You understand that I’ll have to subject you to discipline, and other Healers will have to learn about this, if I determine that there’s any truth to these accusations,” he said.

Draco inclined his head. “Of course, sir. But I know that you’ll make a lengthy and thorough investigation of their truth before you tell anyone else. After all, you found the list on your desk instead of Weasley coming and talking to you. That might sound suspicious—to anyone who doesn’t know the situation and how protective Weasley is of Potter, I mean.”

Mallow stared at him again. Draco looked back so easily that he wanted to laugh again. He should have had Potter as a patient years ago. It would have been effortless to brave all the challenges that hospital flung at him.

_And why is that, do you think?_

Draco swallowed and felt color drain from his face as he thought about the possible reasons that he might be leaning on Potter just as much as Potter was leaning on him. Then he shook his head. He couldn’t stand to think too long about that, or about what would happen when Potter recovered fully and they captured his murderer. It would _happen_ , that was all. In the meantime, he would put up with the distrust from Weasley, the attempts to frame him for crimes he hadn’t committed, and other things.

 _Look at it this way,_ he told himself. _This is the price of skill. Your enemy, whoever he is, wouldn’t be trying to detach you from Potter if you were incompetent._

Mallow took the list back and nodded again. “You are right, of course, Apprentice Healer Malfoy. I will make my investigation and contact the other Healers only if and when I find evidence. I thought you deserved to know about it first, however.”

Draco cleared his throat. “I appreciate it, sir. Thank you.”

Mallow turned his back, indicating the interview was over. Draco practically fled the room, anxious to carry the news to Potter.

*

“Too much about this doesn’t make sense.”

Draco nodded in fervent agreement. Potter was lying back against his pillow and staring at the ceiling again, so Draco wasn’t sure that he saw the nod. But his fingers danced against the covers, and he was frowning hard enough that it probably wouldn’t have made much difference if he had; it couldn’t sour his mood any more.

“Why would Varden take up a cause against me?” Potter turned over on his side and grunted when he did so. Draco sprang up, hovering, but Potter rolled his eyes, and his breathing steadied in the next instant. Draco relaxed. He knew well enough that Potter wouldn’t have been able to do that if he’d really hurt. “No, wait. I don’t know who my enemy is or why he wants to kill me, so it might as well be Varden as anyone else. And I can see a purpose to that list, if they want to get you away from me so that someone can kill me by a fairly easy trick like poison in the food. But leaving that list of potions on the floor of Mallow’s office? Why would they do that? Why risk giving us any sample of his hand to compare to that list?”

“I reckon the list could have been left behind accidentally,” Draco said, shifting his shoulders so that he could lean against the wall more comfortably.

Potter shot him an intense stare. “I don’t believe that, and neither do you.”

“It _would_ seem rather a coincidence, yes.” Draco stretched out a hand, palm-up, in front of him. “But I don’t know what else it could be.” He smiled. “Could that list of potion names and the list of objections that he put Weasley’s name to be another of his twofold tactics, only this one’s intended to drive you mental?”

He reveled in the sound of Potter’s laughter, although it ended soon and Potter was looking him as intensely as Mallow had, earlier. “You know that Ron didn’t really send that list, right?” he asked. “That he wouldn’t do it?”

“Of course I know that,” Draco said. “Once I got a look at the handwriting, I recognized it. And Weasley is more likely to punch me in the face than write a list like that. Not to mention,” he added, unable to resist, “that the sentences were more clever and complex than his small brain could handle.”

“I don’t want you insulting him any more than I want him insulting you.”

Potter said it mildly, but Draco felt a bone-deep shiver work its way up his back. Potter could cut with a few words. “All right,” he said.

Part of him wondered why it mattered. Their association wouldn’t last out a week more, at the very latest—Draco had to think that his own brilliance and Potter’s investigative skills would put the mystery to bed long before then—and then Weasley would never have to deal with Draco again, except under the unimaginable chance that he came in wounded when Draco was on duty as a Healer. Why was Potter so insistent on their getting along?

Well, perhaps he had already figured out that Draco had some hopes of being hired as an Auror Department Healer. That would mean he _would_ be treating both Weasley and Potter in the future. Draco hid his grimace of horror and waited patiently for Potter to say something else.

Potter actually accepted his declaration with a smile and set aside the list of objections against Draco with a firm hand. “We don’t know what the similar handwriting means. We won’t worry about it. Do you have a list yet from the apothecaries who should have sold the base of Peleus’s Revenge?”

Draco nodded and produced that list. It was the only thing that had happened in the last few days which he felt actually proud of. Lucius had given in in the end and made the inquiries, though he hadn’t yet responded to Draco’s letter about why he was helping Potter. Draco hoped that didn’t mean he disapproved.

Potter was reading the list, eyes narrowed. “What does this abbreviation mean?” he asked, tapping the seventh line of the list.

Draco leaned over the list, and then realized the problem and groaned a little. The list, not unnaturally, used apothecaries’ abbreviations for locations, potions, prices, and units sold. Draco could read that language thanks to his interest in Potions and his Healer training. Potter would probably go away and do some bloody stupid thing like trying to get Granger to read it if Draco wasn’t here.

 _Just another way I save him,_ Draco thought with immense irritation, and looked for the abbreviation Potter had been puzzled by. “That means the shop is a small one located in northern England,” he said.

“Not near us, then.” Potter’s finger moved on down the list. “What about this one? _Lo_ means in London, right?”

Draco looked. “No,” he said, with patience that he hoped didn’t sound too strained. “It’s the general heading that begins the Locations column.”

Potter must have heard the strain, because he glared at Draco sideways. “Excuse me for not having the ability to read this,” he snapped. “I didn’t receive the specialized training that you apparently have.”

Draco bit his lips before he responded. “It’s true that I didn’t think about how hard it would be for you,” he said, which was a concession he could make without pain. “But you ought to be able to see that the information is arranged in rows and columns like any _halfway sane_ document, and draw some conclusions from that. The notation I explained before is in this column. The only reason _Lo_ is repeated at all is because it goes onto another page at that point.”

Potter flushed and ducked his head. Draco suspected he was embarrassed about his mistake and politely looked the other way until he heard Potter’s voice again.

“Yes. Thanks. So, will you show me the abbreviations that locate apothecaries in London that sold the base recently?”

Taking pity, Draco found them easily. “But remember that this man might be clever enough to have bought the base a long way off,” he cautioned Potter.

Potter groaned. “I was trying my best to forget that, thanks.”

Draco shook his head, but didn’t make any of the obvious retorts, because all of them were obvious enough to disgrace him. “All right. There are four apothecaries in London close to hospital. One of them sold only a few grains of the base in the last month. The second—” Draco focused his eyes on the purple ink that particular notation had been written in, and snorted.

“What?” Potter demanded.

“It might be useful talking to the seller, still,” Draco conceded. “But I don’t think you’ll find much here if you’re sure that your killer isn’t one of the Aurors. That purple ink signals someone who sells ingredients to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”

Potter didn’t respond, and Draco looked back up, wondering if Potter was going to say that he _did_ think his would-be killer was an Auror. But instead, he was gaping at Draco. Draco raised his eyebrows, and Potter snapped his jaw shut and shook his head. “I thought they kept information like that secret!” he said.

“From obvious criminals, of course,” Draco said, trying to hold back his chuckles. He _was_ enjoying this chance to initiate the innocent Harry Potter into the realities of the world. “But not from each other, and not from someone who could need access to the information for other reasons. Like hospitals or inventory specialists. Why would they?”

Potter dragged a hand across his face. “That’s all we need, an apothecary or an inventory specialist who knows the Dark Arts.”

Draco waved his hand. “In my experience, true inventory specialists are too obsessed with potions and ingredients and how to store them all to have any time to worry about the Dark Arts,” he said loftily. “Concentrate on the ones that appear helpful and friendly and don’t look down at a book or go off to potter in a dark corner the entire time you’re there. _They’re_ the ones you should distrust, because they’re the ones trying to make themselves look normal.”

Potter laughed. Draco soaked in the sound of it, and barely heard the door opening. He wasn’t sure if he would have turned around if he hadn’t still been worried about any attempts to assassinate Potter.

Then again, if there hadn’t been any attempts to assassinate Potter, he wouldn’t have been here at all.

Weasley stood in the doorway, staring transfixed at the sight of them laughing together—or maybe at the two of them bending over the parchment with their heads so close together, Draco thought. “Um,” he said, and took a step back. “I can come in later.”

“Ron!” Potter sat up and tossed the list of apothecaries back to Draco. Draco caught it without taking his eyes off Weasley. He wanted the git to know that he had ruined a special moment. Weasley gulped and shuffled his boots nervously. “We have some information about apothecaries in London who might have sold the thing that poisoned me.”

Draco rolled his eyes. The _thing_ , indeed. He knew now that Potter was smarter than that. He thought Potter tried to curb his intelligence in front of Weasley on purpose, so that he could fit in better with the common man.

Draco could have told him it wouldn’t work. Try as he might, nothing about Harry Potter would ever look ordinary.

A moment later, he thought, _Why did I think that?_

He found the idea that he’d turned into one of Potter’s admirers so disturbing that he was almost grateful when Weasley cleared his throat, shot Draco a distrustful look, and asked, “Well, how are we going to find out which one it was?”

Draco smiled, took up the list, and tapped the one London apothecary that was marked in purple ink. “I doubt that it will be this one,” he said. “They would have to have their records spotless since they work with the Aurors, and anyone who wanted to buy the base and keep the purchase hidden would know that. He’s likely to have bought it at one of the others.”

“Unless he knew that and wanted to throw us off the scent by doing something that we didn’t suspect!” Weasley looked triumphant.

“I think he’s hidden his trail well, but we can’t attribute superhuman intelligence to him or always assume he’s ahead,” Draco said. “We’d never get anywhere.”

Weasley stared at him. Draco sniffed. “What? Do I have a piece of food on my shirt?” He made a mental note to test Potter’s food for more poisons later that day, as long as the notion of eating was crossing his mind.

“No,” Weasley said slowly. “It’s just that what you said made _sense_. I thought that never happened.”

Draco glared, but he couldn’t find the venom to sustain the glare for long. “I think it’s this one,” he said, and laid his finger on the fourth apothecary in the list of those that were close to hospital.

“Why?” Potter asked, luckily working as a buffer between him and Weasley yet again. He leaned forwards so that he could see the list better, and this time the motion didn’t cause him to immediately begin gasping. Draco noted that with approval. The Merlin’s Tears had run their course, and while that meant Potter’s murderer would probably notice his improved condition soon and try something else, at least that meant Potter wasn’t in danger of dying from the rare complications that could come with consuming that poison.

“Because,” Draco said, “of the name.” He tapped the other list of shop names, and Potter obediently swiveled his head to look at it.

“I don’t understand,” he said after a moment. “Pythia’s Potions? What about it? Who’s Pythia?” he added.

Draco clucked his tongue. “The young get no education these days,” he said, and rather enjoyed Potter’s glares. “Pythia was the name of a priestess who served Apollo. The Greek god of sunshine, among other things,” he added, when Potter’s face remained blank. “She foretold the future by inhaling a kind of holy smoke. Shops that refer to her usually sell supplies that are meant to go into potions focusing on the future and visions, though of course they’d sell other ingredients, too.”

“I still don’t understand,” Potter said.

“Neither do I,” Weasley said, probably to remind them he still existed.

Draco gave them a lofty look. “No reason that you should. The reason that the Pythia’s shrine was sacred has to do with a deed that Apollo performed there, driving off the enormous serpents that used to guard it.” He waited, but the expected comprehension didn’t make its way into their faces. “Surely you know what it means for an apothecary or other Potions shop to refer to a snake in its name,” he snapped.

“Assume that we don’t and enlighten us,” Potter said, his voice tight.

Draco shook his head. “It’s a code that the Dark wizards started using years ago, back during our time at Hogwarts, when there were first reports of the Dark Lord’s return.” He swallowed; he didn’t like to think about that time and the naïve boy he’d been. But he’d survived and got into a considerably better position, although it would be an even better one when people stopped being prejudiced against him. “Since part of his symbol was a snake, Dark wizards arranged to meet at places that had a snake as part of the name, or were otherwise associated with snakes in some way. It spread, and, among other things, shops that were willing to cater to Dark wizards—not just Death Eaters—changed their names. I was sure the Aurors knew this,” he had to add. It was an open secret among the staff of St. Mungo’s.

“No,” Potter said, after exchanging a long look with Weasley. “We never did. But since all the shops sold this ingredient, why would you assume it _had_ to be the one that caters to Dark wizards?”

Draco shrugged. “It’s simply likely, that’s all. Of course apothecaries will ask what their customers are using the ingredients for, so as not to get into legal trouble. But a place like Pythia’s Potions is much less likely to ask, because they don’t care. They have other recourses in place to avoid that kind of trouble.”

“They’re going to find themselves in trouble all right, after this,” Weasley said grimly.

Potter nodded. “And you think that our murderer couldn’t have prepared a convincing lie?”

Draco was tempted to say _your murderer_ in response, but he didn’t want to disclaim any sort of name that would bring him closer to Potter, if only to irritate Weasley. “I think our murderer is a Healer,” he said. “There are signs that will reveal that expertise to a knowledgeable apothecary, the same way that we have basic knowledge about them. Why go to a shop where he’d have to come up with several disguises and lies, and might still betray himself, instead of one that was more convenient in all the ways that mattered?”

Potter gave him a slow smile, and Draco swallowed as he felt a surge of response pass through his body, especially his groin. He tore his eyes away and tried to focus on both of them, Weasley and Potter, at once. Weasley was tapping the list with one finger as if he assumed that it would vanish if he didn’t keep a hold of it.

“We’ll have a means to find him now,” he said. “Even if this Pythia’s Potions isn’t the one, you think that you can find other apothecaries with the same likeliness to sell to Dark wizards, Malfoy?”

Draco nodded. “Of course. I just assumed that you knew the code already, or I would have identified them before I brought the list to you.”

“We’ll catch a lot more of them after this, too, the bastards,” Weasley murmured. He was staring at the wall as if he could see through it and into the heart of every Dark wizard hiding in hospital. Draco had the feeling that he was seeing the Auror and not the concerned friend or the git Weasel for the first time during Potter’s stay here.

“We will,” Potter said. “But I think you ought to go back to the Department and put the more subtle spies on this, Ron. They’ll have to take a look at Pythia’s Potions before they can raid it.”

“Teach me how to do my job, right,” Weasley said, and punched Potter on the shoulder before he left. He even nodded at Draco, which made Draco shake his head in wonder.

“You were great.”

Draco turned back to Potter, only to realize that his face was much closer to Draco’s own than he’d thought. Draco swallowed and resisted the temptation to take a step back. It was just that he was startled, that was all, he told himself defensively, not afraid. “With Weasley?” he asked, because he wasn’t sure what Potter meant. “When we’re united in the cause of saving you, he’s not so bad, I reckon.”

“In general.” Potter had an unnervingly soft voice when he chose to use it. “It’s just—it’s wonderful.” His hand reached out, and Draco watched it come as if in a dream.

It closed on his. Potter lifted his hand and turned it back and forth as if examining his fingernails for signs of dirt. Draco raised an eyebrow in challenge, used to this kind of inspection from Healers who wanted to catch him dragging disease about.

Potter bowed his head and pressed his lips to Draco’s knuckles, a quiet, reverent gesture that stunned him so much he stood still for a long moment.

By the time he could recover, it was over. Potter leaned back against the pillow and looked at him with eyes full of bright challenges of their own.

Draco took a deep breath, blurted, “Um, I should go pick up your food now,” and bolted out the door.

He felt stupid, but he simply couldn’t stay in the same room with Potter a moment longer. It took him every effort not to collapse where he stood.

_That can’t mean what I thought it did._

But the memory of the shine in Potter’s eyes—though his abrupt exit might have dimmed that—said that it did.


	5. Promises and Passions

“Malfoy.”

Draco stifled a yelp and turned around from the wall he was cleaning as though he had expected Sabian to be there. He offered him a cool nod, while wondering how in the world the boy _did_ that, to get so close and speak his name before Draco heard him. “Sabian. Do you have some information for me?”

He felt some of his self-confidence return as the boy preened under his words. _It’ll be easy enough to keep ahead of him as long as he feels like he’s participating in something important by assisting me. Which he is. There’s nothing more important in hospital right now than saving Harry Potter’s life._

Of course, Draco immediately thought of a dozen people who would disagree with him, all Healers with their own particular cases. Healers _did_ get possessive of their patients, Draco thought with wonder. He’d never had a chance to experience it before, since no one had trusted him with a patient of his own.

He tried to put the thought aside—as well as his suspicions that more than professional possessiveness drove the thought—as he listened to Sabian. Sabian crowded close to him and looked over his shoulder before he replied, which meant he probably _did_ have information.

“Only one person saw Ron Weasley after he supposedly left hospital,” Sabian murmured hoarsely. “It was Haagedorn.”

It took Draco a moment to remember who that was, and then he frowned in astonishment. “The Squib? You’re sure?” Sabian nodded. “And how do you know that he was the only one who saw him?” Draco continued, gaining confidence. “Someone else could have seen him, someone you didn’t talk to.”

“Well, if you’re going to distrust all my evidence like that, then I have no reason to try at all,” Sabian said, and stepped back, giving Draco such an offended look that Draco could see his prospects for gaining knowledge vanishing like seeds on the wind.

“No, I didn’t mean it that way,” Draco said, even though he had. “I’m sorry.” He smiled. “What was Haagedorn’s evidence?”

Sabian regarded him with a jaundiced eye for a moment, then seemed to decide all was forgiven and stepped back close to him. Draco’s gaze darted to the door of the room they were in. He hoped that no one would open it, see them standing this near, and come to the wrong conclusion, especially because rumors would probably reach Potter before Draco would.

 _And that’s the last thing I need to be thinking about,_ he told himself sternly, again, and tried to clear his mind the way he would when he was getting ready to practice Occlumency before he listened to Sabian’s report.

“Haagedorn said that he saw Weasley step out of an alcove on Potter’s corridor,” Sabian murmured. “He acted as though he’d been standing there for hours, rubbing his neck and stretching his arms. He even brought a strand of hair down in front of his eyes like he was checking it was there.” Sabian snickered.

Draco nodded, but didn’t laugh in return. In fact, those symptoms sounded familiar. It was the same kind of thing he would do after transforming with Polyjuice, to make sure it had taken.

“He walked along to Potter’s door and stood there a minute. Haagedorn thought he was listening for something inside the room. He called out, wanting to know if there was something he could do for him, and Weasley turned around and shook his head. Then he walked around the corner and vanished. Haagedorn didn’t think about it for a while.

“Then he happened to mention it to someone else later that day, and found out they hadn’t seen Weasley. In fact, they were positive that Weasley had left hospital earlier that day and hadn’t come back. Haagedorn asked a few other people and found out the same thing. He thought there was something strange about that, but he didn’t find anyone who believed him.” Sabian rolled his eyes. “Most people thought he was drunk.”

“That was stupid of them,” Draco said. For his own reasons, Haagedorn disapproved of alcohol and wouldn’t touch it. Draco thought it had to do with his belonging to some Muggle religion or something like that.

“ _I_ thought so,” Sabian said with a satisfied tone, as if his agreement was all that was needed to make Draco’s thoughts true. Draco had to smother a smile. “So that was odd. But where could he have gone? The corridor off Potter’s room leads to the entrance of the ward. Do you think someone’s being bribed to keep his entrance and leaving a secret?” Sabian rapped his fingers against the wall, leaving some prints that Draco would have to clean off later. “Or maybe Weasley’s cheating on his wife!”

He sounded indignant now, and Draco shook his head. That was all he needed, for his spy to cherish a secret passion for war heroine Hermione Granger and confront Weasley under the impression that she needed defending. “I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s related to the murder attempt on Potter.”

Sabian stared at him with his mouth open. “But Weasley couldn’t want to murder him!” he exclaimed, seeming to forget that he’d accused Weasley of his own share of crimes a minute ago. “They’re best mates!”

“Well, someone might want to make it _seem_ like Weasley was a suspect,” Draco said kindly. “That’s the next thing I want you to work on. See if anyone has been spreading rumors about Weasley or reports that he’s unreliable. Talk to other Aurors visiting their wounded partners and relatives if you can. There’s gossip in the Ministry that we probably won’t hear here if we don’t search for it.”

Sabian nodded so hard that Draco thought he’d break his neck. “I say, this is _bloody_ exciting,” he said, and then dashed through the door of the room, leaving it swinging behind him.

Draco rolled his eyes, and then winced as he looked up at the clock on the wall he was scrubbing. The time, if it was right, meant he had to go and bring his food to Potter.

He told himself it was just worry, natural worry over Potter’s health, in his stomach, rather than butterflies.

*

“I was beginning to think I’d driven you away.”

Potter spoke seriously, but with a smile on his face that made Draco halt just inside the door and stare at him. Were they going to talk about this _now_? He had assumed they’d dance around each other in nervous silence for a few minutes, and then get busy solving the puzzle of who was trying to kill Potter, and then maybe have a minute or more of nervous silence before Draco left. 

_But of course, that wouldn’t make much sense for Potter,_ he told himself a moment later. _He’s a Gryffindor. He probably wonders why I ran away._

He cleared his throat and set the tray down carefully on the table inside the door, rather than the one near Potter’s bed, so that he could cast the charms that would detect poisons. “Not really,” he said. “I’m your Healer. You won’t drive me away.”

“Then I can do _this_.”

Draco had assumed, without thinking about it, that Potter was still too weak to sit up much. Potter took him completely by surprise when he climbed out of the bed, walked over, took both of Draco’s hands, and firmly kissed the back of the right one, then the left one.

Draco knew his mouth was open. He also knew that he wasn’t at his most attractive, although Potter looked up with faux-innocent eyes and murmured, “I do admire that view all the way to the back of your mouth.”

Draco shook his head and managed to get his voice back. “We really can’t do this,” he said, in the sort of stern tone that he had used when discussing the murder attempts, and which he thought Potter would pay the most attention to. “They’ll take me away from you if they think I’m affecting you that way. Patients aren’t allowed to be attracted to their Healers.” He’d almost said _fall in love with their Healers,_ but that was presumptuous.

“I’d like to see them try.” Potter had moved his mouth further down along Draco’s right arm and was breathing on it. He watched with what looked like interest and pride as the hairs there stirred in the wake of his breath. “If they do, then I’ll throw a temper tantrum like the spoiled little hero they think I am and get you back.” He glanced up, and his smile was blinding. “They wouldn’t risk that.”

Draco swallowed and moved a step away. “I don’t know why you’re doing this,” he said. “You can’t—I mean, it’s not sensible.”

Potter laughed so hard that he let go of Draco’s hands so he could sag against the wall. Draco pulled his hands back and tried to tell himself that he didn’t miss the warmth of Potter’s clutch on them. “When have you known me to be _sensible_?” Potter finally demanded when he stopped laughing. “What part of leaving myself out as bait for a murderer is _sensible_? But there you are.”

Draco stared silently at the food. The apple had a little dent in its skin today, he noticed, and wondered if that came from someone tossing the fruit carelessly onto the tray before they realize who it was for. “I’m not—that’s a different kind of lack of sense from the one I mean,” he said finally.

“Really?” Potter cocked his head. “I could swear that you were attracted to me, too. Was I wrong? Are you upset that I forced this on you?”

His tone was so wounded that Draco glanced up quickly and had to shake his head. “No,” he said grudgingly. “But I didn’t plan to act on that attraction. After all, we aren’t going to be around each other long.”

“Yes, we are,” Potter said, and gave Draco a grin that could have inspired people to march out and battle the Dark Lord. Dazedly, Draco wondered why he hadn’t used it during the actual war. “That’s usually what happens when people are dating.”

Draco felt his face pale. Potter pouted. “You don’t need to look so horrified to find out that was my plan,” he muttered, and he sounded like a sulky little boy.

Draco licked his lips. “I didn’t—I mean.”

“Yes?” Potter cupped a hand around his ear as if he assumed he would need better hearing to make out Draco’s actual answer.

“I mean that I didn’t plan on this, and I didn’t think it would happen,” Draco said. “You’re attractive. I can accept that you’re attracted to me. But what powers it? Is it just gratitude that makes you want to date me? Because,” he added, and he felt a little more like himself now that Potter wasn’t touching him, “you could most effectively show your gratitude by making sure that I get a promotion in hospital.”

Potter straightened and shook his head, face grave. “No, I like you and I like the way you solve problems and I like the way you talk to me, without the fawning that lots of people do or the sneer because they assume that all the stories are exaggerated and I can’t have done anything worth doing since the war. That’s where it started. And then I started noticing other things.” He gave Draco that grin that should have knocked someone dead long since again. “Your eyes. The way you frown when you’re concentrating. How big you—”

“ _Um_ ,” Draco said hastily. “Look. I—I don’t think I’d be against dating you, either. It’s just that it’s completely new and I never even _considered_ it.”

Potter gave him a condescending look. The man did know how he looked then, Draco admitted. The amazing thing was that he wasn’t conceited with it.

“All right, all right,” Draco said. “But not seriously. Can I wait and think about this? It’s a strange thing to have to deal with all at once.”

Potter shrugged, looking anticipatory instead of disappointed. “All right. I just want another chance when this is done.” He reached out and snagged the apple from the tray, lifting it to his mouth. 

Draco’s eyes focused on the apple’s skin. Its smooth skin, undented and unmarked.

He lunged forwards, batting the apple out of Potter’s hand and watching as it hit the far wall. It reminded him of the way the Wilder’s Growth potion had splattered when he knocked it from Mallow’s hand. He felt a bit light-headed, thinking of the way that this might have resulted in the same thing, the murderer managing to sneak a different apple into place right under Draco’s watching eyes.

 _How_ had he done that?

Draco felt a strong shiver work its way up his back. They were dealing with someone who either could sneak into a room absolutely undetected by anyone there, or with someone who had mastered magic Draco had never heard of, powerful and complex.

“What the fuck, Malfoy?”

Draco blinked and focused on Potter. He sounded more bewildered than angry, his eyes locked on Draco with a frown between them, but he was giving Draco the chance to explain. Draco nodded.

“When I looked at the apple while we were talking,” he said, “I noticed a small dent in the skin. The one you lifted to your mouth didn’t have that mark.”

It didn’t take Potter long to grasp the implication. His face went pale, and he stood looking expressionlessly at the apple for a minute. Then he Levitated it over to the tray. Draco approved his caution. He didn’t _think_ the apple would have any poison that could be absorbed through the skin, but it was possible, and Potter was finally acting as though he could take care of his own life.

Potter took a few minutes to examine the apple, turning it over and looking for any marks, or at least so Draco thought. Then he held it out. “Test it again for poison, please,” he said quietly.

Draco was happy to oblige. The first two charms, looking for common poisons like Merlin’s Tears, didn’t show anything, but the apple turned an angry purple with the third charm. Draco felt himself go still as he stared at it.

“What does it mean?” Potter’s voice was soft now, all the anger gone, and he reached out and put a hand on Draco’s shoulder as if he thought that one of them would need the support. Draco appreciated the gesture even if he didn’t need it. 

“This looks for strong poisons,” Draco said, “the ones that are meant to mimic natural events like blood bursts in the brain and heart attacks.” He cast a few more charms to narrow down the incidence. “I can’t be sure which of the two poisons it is—they’re very similar and closely related—but it would have killed you with no more than one or two bites.”

Potter closed his eyes for so long that Draco started to turn towards him in concern, but Potter said simply, in a calm, flat voice, “Then you’ve saved my life yet again. From the Wilder’s Growth potion, from the Merlin’s Tears, from the base of Peleus’s Revenge, and now this.” His eyes snapped open.

Draco was more concerned than ever. He wondered if Potter had finally grown so angry at his murderer that he wanted to go out and hunt him himself. Draco couldn’t blame him for that, but he did think they should wait and plan. He opened his mouth to say so.

He didn’t get the chance. Potter was on him in a silent rush, pushing him backwards, driving his mouth into Draco’s and lashing his tongue out so that Draco’s open lips _had_ to take it in. Then they were up against the far wall, and Draco’s hands were helplessly on Potter’s shoulders, and Potter’s were, much more firmly, on his, and Potter _snogged_ him hard enough to make Draco gasp in silent pleasure.

Potter pressed closer and closer, his eyes half-shut now, that expression of furious determination still on his face. Draco surrendered and let himself be kissed. Now and then a warning thought arose, such as worry about what someone walking past the door might see, or concern over the murderer’s second line of attack that had to be showing up shortly, but always they melted away again and he was kissed.

Potter finally pulled back. “ _There_ ,” he said, or rather panted, his eyes still too bright. “I trust that convinces you I’m serious?”

Draco licked his lips dazedly. Then he nodded. “But I still think that you might only like me because I saved your life,” he had to add.

Potter smiled. “That’s the basis of it,” he said frankly. “But I really do like you for you, and I’d like to date you.” He cast a glance back at the tray of food as if he had just realized that there might be other poisons in it. “When we’ve cleared this up.”

“Of course,” Draco said, amused by the qualifier, weak though it was. He stepped back towards the tray and began casting the charms that would find the second poison, if there was one and the second line of attack wasn’t something else. Potter wandered up behind him and draped himself casually over Draco’s shoulders.

Again Draco felt a thrill of anxiety, but he couldn’t quell the pride and the happiness that came spilling out in his smile. Potter—perhaps Draco should call him Harry now—noticed it and laid his head on Draco’s shoulder with a small sigh of contentment.

“You’ve won me,” he said. “You have every right to be proud.”

“Still arrogant, I see,” Draco said mildly, and at that point his next spell made the porridge glow with such a strong purple glare that they both had to shield their eyes. Draco lowered his hand and stared bitterly at the porridge, all the fun fled out of him. 

“And what does that mean?” Harry asked in his ear.

“You would have died once you touched it,” Draco said. “That’s the light of a personal poison. It was tuned to you, and only you.”

Harry licked his lips. “I don’t know how that could have happened,” he said carefully. “I mean, I’m not exactly sure of the process that you have to go through to tune a poison to someone, having never wanted to do it myself, but—it would require prolonged personal contact with that someone, wouldn’t it?”

Draco nodded. “Even that’s more than most people know. Knowledge of you, contact with you, and access to a piece of your body, usually your hair.” He paused and waited for Harry to reach the obvious conclusion, but when he didn’t, he added, “I would understand if you suspected me.”

Harry turned his head and gave him a look of contempt that made Draco shiver. “Of _course_ not,” Harry said. “You could have killed me directly by now, so many times over that it’s not even worth asking the question about how you would have done it.”

“Weasley might suspect me,” Draco said, so affected by the fact that Potter didn’t think he was the murderer he felt dazed.

“It doesn’t matter if he does,” Harry said. “Any more than you can suspect him. I don’t want to hear about your private little quarrels with each other. I just want you to act politely towards each other when I’m around.”

Draco, who had in fact been about to suggest that Weasley would be the natural next one to suspect, with all the knowledge about Harry that this poison implied, shut his mouth again. And then he thought about it, and realized it would never work. For one thing, whoever had made the poison obviously hadn’t known about the Parseltongue, or they never would have sent snakes against Harry. Weasley had to know that. For a second, there was no way that Weasley would possess the complex brewing skills required to tune a poison.

_Unless we posit there’s a group of people out there, all of them working to make Harry’s life as unpleasant as possible…_

Draco shook his head. That way lay conspiracy theories. He wouldn’t think like that unless he absolutely had to. “Fine. Then we have to fit this in with all the other facts that we have about your would-be murderer. I still think it’s a Healer, because of what I told you about Pythia’s Potions, and the brewing skills that this poison would require.”

Harry smiled tightly. “I wonder what will happen when he learns that I didn’t die from touching the food.”

Draco paused. A plan had come to him, but he didn’t know if Harry would agree with it so soon after stating his liking for Draco.

“Well?” Harry seemed to have noticed his hesitation. He leaned forwards, eyes bright and inquiring. “What is it?”

“I could go out of the room and say that you flung the food back in my face and said it was shit,” Draco said. “That would give us the excuse. But then you would have to act like you distrusted me, or at least were displeased with me, and I’m not sure that—”

“No,” Harry snapped, reaching out and catching Draco in his arms. “You’re already at risk because you’re my personal Healer. Yes, the murderer might not suspect us of such close collaboration if we act disgusted with each other, but he might also decide that now’s the time to eliminate you, while you’re away from me for a while. If you’re going to be in danger anyway, I want it to be under my eye.”

Draco turned his head and rested his face against Harry’s palm. He couldn’t have explained the dread that convulsed him when he thought about leaving Harry, or the relief that was his now that he knew he wouldn’t have to do that.

“No,” Harry went on in a thoughtful tone, “what we should do is solve the mystery as soon as possible.”

Draco opened one eye and stared at him in astonishment. “Yes, of course we should,” he said when he could speak. “Because that’s so _easy_.”

“I didn’t mean that it was easy, only that it was something we had to do.” Harry took his arms from Draco, to Draco’s loneliness and confusion, and began to pace up and down his room, head bowed. “If the murderer is desperate enough to try clumsy things like this—he couldn’t have known that you would be out of the room when I touched the porridge, after all—then it might mean he’s running out of something. Patience. Time. Money. We should be able to track him down more easily now.”

“I still don’t see how,” Draco said sullenly. “Why should he leave his hiding place once he realizes that his latest attempt didn’t work? He might even give up and decide that he’s not going to try to anymore.”

Harry turned and smiled at him. Draco narrowed his eyes. He had already learned to beware that shining smile.

“Well?” he demanded.

“We’re not going to pretend that the poison didn’t work because I got fed up with you,” Harry said. “We’re going to pretend that it worked, I’m dead, and see what the murderer does next.”

Draco stood frozen for a moment. Then he rolled his eyes. “That’s exactly the kind of plan that an Auror who doesn’t know hospital routine would come up with,” he said. “Which means that I really can’t suspect Weasley, since I’m sure he’s even worse about this than you are.”

Harry looked torn between pleased and annoyed. “Are you going to tell me what you mean?” he asked with false politeness.

“Of course I am,” Draco said. “I mean that St. Mungo’s has wards which go off when a patient dies, and they’ve never been known to fail. I also can’t fake them,” he added, when Harry opened his mouth and Draco _knew_ that would be the next suggestion. “Among other things, the wards have to ring in four offices at once, those of Healers and hospital administrators. So, no. No one would believe me without a crowd of other people rushing to your room and a clatter of alarms in the air.”

Harry looked so thoughtful that Draco knew, again, what his next words would be before he spoke them. He didn’t manage to speak in time to muffle them, though. “That might be arranged—”

“It still wouldn’t take care of the problem about the wards having to ring in the private offices I told you about,” Draco said firmly. “No.”

Harry sighed. “Then what _can_ we do?” He gestured again at his tray. “If he tried this, he’ll try something else. And I can’t count on you to stop everything. He has skills I don’t know about, and while you might be able to identify the poisons, you can only do that if they let you stay. Would you have thought of testing the porridge for a poison attuned to me?”

Draco sighed. “No. I’d started to think I knew him, just based on the way he’s acted so far and what you’ve told me. I would have thought that he would use subtle poisons, like the Merlin’s Tears, not these big and flashy things. Perhaps he doesn’t care about how you die anymore, as long as you’re dead. He might not even care that we can trace it back to him.”

Harry winced and nodded. “You may be right. But where does that leave us? This is still our best chance to find him. If I leave St. Mungo’s, I might be safer for a day or two, but he can follow me around and strike from a distance again.”

“Give me one more day,” Draco said, hating the suggestion even as he made it. He hated to think of Harry in danger. That might just be the Healer’s possessiveness over his patient coming out again, but Draco didn’t think it was. “I might be able to think about this more efficiently away from hospital, to put together the clues combined with what we’ve learned about him today.” He eyed Harry. “I just don’t know how I’m going to leave you alone and trust that you’ll be safe. I wish I could give you a Portkey.”

“Why can’t you?” Harry asked in interest, leaning forwards. Draco thought he had never met someone who was so _interested_ in everything. Of course, it had worked out well for him, personally. He just hoped that their would-be murderer couldn’t work out a way to use Harry’s curiosity against him.

“Because the hospital has wards up against Portkeys, too,” Draco said, shaking his head. “Too many mad patients with a talent for creating them in the past.”

Harry gave him a sly smile. “You forget that I have my wand, something that my murderer still doesn’t know, if our luck is good,” he said. “I can lower those wards, and I’m relatively sure I can do that without anyone noticing. And then, well, _you_ can create the Portkey and give it to me, right? No wards are up to notice when a Healer does it?”

Draco opened his mouth to object, and then began to grin. Then he began to snicker. He ended up by laughing, leaning against the wall, while Harry watched him and shook his head from time to time. 

“Well?’ Harry asked at last.

“There are, in fact, wards up that alert the hospital administrators when Healers start making Portkeys,” Draco said, brushing the tears of laughter from his face. “But there isn’t the same kind of watch kept on _Apprentice_ Healers.”

Harry grinned back and walked over to nudge Draco’s shoulder with his. It was the kind of gesture Draco could have imagined him using with Weasley, and he swallowed with some difficulty. “I’m sure that my murderer would never have thought of that,” Harry said smugly, “even if he is a Healer in hospital. He would probably think that you were incompetent and easy to get past.” He paused meditatively. “I wonder if he thinks that I’m the one detecting the poisons in my food and escaping that way?”

“I don’t know,” Draco said honestly. “Do Aurors have those kinds of skills?”

“We usually pretend that we do,” Harry said. “We like to discourage people from poisoning us, after all.”

Draco snorted, and then tried to pretend that he hadn’t. There was no reason that he had to give Harry _every_ encouragement, after all. “I’ll create a Portkey that’s attuned to my house for you,” he said decisively. “Keep it with you at all times, but make sure that you don’t touch it to bare skin unless you need to escape immediately. Understand?”

Harry nodded, eyes serious, and watched as Draco took a button from his robe to make the Portkey. Draco listened despite himself for any signs of anyone watching or listening at the door as he performed the spell, but no one rushed in and tried to stop him.

When he extended the Portkey to Harry, Harry scooped it up with his sleeve over his hand and stuck it in his pocket. Then he watched Draco with somber eyes. “Just take care of yourself,” he said. “I still think it’s possible that you might be in more danger than I am.”

“It _is_ a big, scary world outside your door,” Draco agreed, and then pretended to think.

Harry eyed him suspiciously.

“Will you give me a kiss just in case?” Draco fluttered his eyelashes. “That would make it easier to endure.”

Whether Harry was punishing him for his teasing or not, Draco didn’t know, but he _did_ know that he staggered out of the room warm-faced and giddy-headed and trying desperately to control his emotions.

*

A calm brown owl brought Weasley’s report on the Pythia’s Potions raid that night. Draco read it shaking his head. He could have _told_ them that the shop had wards that would be triggered to destroy the most incriminating potions the moment anyone wearing Auror robes came through the door, but he had foolishly thought that they had already known that.

 _You’ll never go hungry underestimating the readiness of Aurors,_ Draco thought, and read to the end of the report without learning anything new. The owner of Pythia’s had said that he’d sold the base of Peleus’s Revenge to a client who looked like a Healer, but he refused to admit anything else. 

It was possible the Aurors might persuade him to take Veritaserum or supply more details, but Draco didn’t think they would. They had him in a holding cell for now, but as Weasley admitted, there was little they could charge him with, given that there were no illegal potions in the shop (no, he didn’t know that wards had destroyed them, Draco concluded). He would be out in a few days, and meanwhile, it behooved him not to upset his most important clients.

Draco laid down the report and shut his eyes. He had to make the confusing jagged mess of the clues about Harry’s would-be murderer make sense. _He_ ought to be able to do it even if no one else could. Why not? He was the most brilliant mind in hospital, and he knew a lot more about Healing than either Harry or Weasley. Healing was the key to solving the mystery, he was sure of it. The killer had to be a Healer.

_Which only leaves, oh, a few hundred suspects._

Draco shook his head with a grimace. There _had_ to be ways to narrow it down. He just couldn’t think of them right now.

He let his mind drift, picking up fact after fact and looking at it. The enemy liked to attack with two lines of offense. One was meant to complement the other, but either could have killed. It wasn’t as though he paired a weak attack with a strong attack, which would make no sense. 

All the contingencies, Draco thought. The murderer would think about one thing and then provide against a chance happening that could reduce one of them. He might not have known for sure that the Marble Walking Curse would still be on Harry when he reached hospital, but he would have made sure the Wilder’s Growth Potion got smuggled in, because Harry’s poppy allergy assured that that would have killed him anyway. He had a lot of intimate information.

And how _had_ he ensured that the Wilder’s Growth potion got smuggled in anyway? Yes, he could have suborned Sabian, but Draco utterly refused to believe that he had known Sabian would be the apprentice sent to collect the potion. And this enemy didn’t seem like someone who made wild guesses and took wild risks.

The answer was the potion. The answer was the apple today. Somehow, it had been changed right under their noses. Solve one enigma, and they would solve the other. And solve this problem, and one would solve the whole mystery.

Draco’s conviction on that score was probably irrational, but he still thought it.

So. What could have changed the apple from the normal one that Draco knew he had seen for the poisoned one? Invisibility Cloak? Telekinesis from a distance? Disillusionment Charm?

No, neither the Charm nor the Cloak would do, Draco thought. Maybe in Harry’s room today, with only the two of them, but not in the desperate struggle to save Harry’s life, with so many people crowded around the bed. Someone would have bumped the disguised or invisible person and noticed.

He could have gone in anyway, trusting to his skill to let him make it out again unnoticed, but Draco didn’t think so. Again, this enemy was not someone who took chances that he didn’t need to take.

So. A spell from a distance. Draco had never heard that studies in object teleportation had come to anything, though, at least not without a prior connection with both objects. The enemy would certainly have touched the poisoned apple, but he couldn’t have counted on touching the ordinary apple that was placed on Harry’s tray at first.

What kind of spell would let you substitute one object for another when you couldn’t be sure that you would have the chance to thoroughly familiarize yourself with both objects beforehand?

A jerking breath caught in Draco’s throat. His eyes flew open, and he stared at the ceiling. The answer to the problem had slammed into his mind, and with it had come the solution to the mystery, as he had known would happen.

A Switching Charm.

A Switching Charm could be performed that would reverse the positions of two objects, bring one close and send the other away. It would still be tricky to do when one was outside a room, but one could stand just outside the door and try it. In Polyjuice disguise, perhaps? 

And the first time, Draco saw exactly how it must have happened. Sabian _had_ brought the right potion, the Stone Response potion that he’d been prompted to bring. He’d been told exactly where to find it. He’d been chosen for his skill to be calm under pressure, which was the reason that Draco didn’t know how he could have made a mistake, and Sabian didn’t understand it, either. The incident had been meant to be mysterious to everyone. He’d brought the right potion, and then the Stone Response potion had vanished, switched with the Wilder’s Growth potion at the last moment, right when it would have killed Harry.

By the person who was holding it, of course. Nothing easier.

_Mallow._

Draco didn’t understand how he couldn’t have seen it earlier. The pieces were falling into place now. Mallow had been Harry’s Healer in the past. He knew all sorts of intimate information about him, which would include the poppy allergy. He was powerful, which would explain his ability to perform a Switching Charm from such a distance. He could employ apprentices it would be difficult to suspect and he was the one who had “found” the list of accusations from “Weasley” on his desk. 

He was the one who had assigned Draco to Harry.

Sharp shivers worked their way over Draco’s body. He didn’t know where to look or what to do next, and found that he had leaped to his feet and was striding back and forth across the room. 

Mallow would have the time to brew the Polyjuice. He could have left Varden’s list of potions in his office easily, and then prevented the apprentices from entering and picking it up until Sabian found it. Draco could see now why he had done that, and why he had made sure that the list of objections by “Weasley” was in the same handwriting. He had hoped to throw Draco and Harry off and make them suspect Varden, or whoever they thought had written that particular list, if they hadn’t discovered that it was her.

Mallow had wanted to use the list of objections to alienate Draco from Harry. He hadn’t realized how close Draco and Harry had grown by that point.

And it explained why he hadn’t used deeply obvious methods until now. He must have gone on suspecting that the Merlin’s Tears and Peleus’s Revenge would work long after they had stopped working, because he thought Draco was such an incompetent Healer that he wouldn’t recognize those poisons.

And of course “Weasley” in Polyjuice disguise had vanished. The corridor Sabian had traced him to was where one of Mallow’s private storerooms lay. He could have hidden himself in one swift motion.

Draco stopped walking suddenly.

What would Mallow do now that Harry was alone in hospital without anyone to protect him? What if he had brewed Polyjuice and gained entrance to Harry’s room as Weasley before Harry had reason to suspect that anything was wrong?

Draco closed his eyes and tried to calm himself. There was no reason for Mallow to suspect that Draco had figured things out. He had shown himself cautious and wary enough that Draco would be surprised if he tried a second violent attack in the same day when the first one, with the poisoned apple and porridge, had failed.

On the other hand, his attacks had built up over the days, becoming stronger and stronger. What if he knew that Draco was the one who had figured out his trick with the apple and the porridge—and Draco thought Mallow must know by now that Draco wasn’t as incompetent as he had thought him—and would try again now that Draco was out of the way? He could have known, since he must have been standing close to the door to switch the apples.

Weasley might have defended Harry, but Weasley wasn’t there. And Harry didn’t know the routines of hospital, the ins and outs and what was usual or unusual, the way Draco would.

Draco flung himself towards the Floo.


	6. Dreams and Desires

Draco slowed his run when he emerged from the Floo connection into St. Mungo’s. He would attract the wrong kind of attention if he hurried here. Those who recognized him would think it their duty to interfere and ask why an Apprentice Healer was running in the corridors; those who didn’t would stop him and ask where the emergency was and if they could help.

Not for the first time, Draco regretted that there was absolutely no one anywhere in hospital he could trust.

 _But that’s the price to be paid for having a lot of magic and a Death Eater name,_ he reminded himself as he slipped down the corridor that led to Harry’s room, checking anxiously behind and in front of him. The doors to the sides were all locked, and only dim firelight spilled out from beneath them. Draco kept his wand, with the _Lumos_ Charm on the end of it, low in front of him, so that no one behind those doors would spot the strange shine moving down the corridor where no shine should be. _And for remaining an apprentice for three years, when everyone else I entered the program with can feel superior to me._

Draco ground his teeth. Everyone thought he was incompetent, and although that had worked to his advantage with Mallow, who’d assigned him to Harry because he thought for sure Harry would die on Draco’s watch, the implication was still insulting.

He reached Harry’s room. Draco forced himself to pause and draw a deep breath a few times, rather than simply burst through the door, no matter how much he wanted to. If he entered and found Harry dead, then he couldn’t be responsible for his reactions. If he entered and Harry was still alive, he might spring a trap.

Eventually, when he thought his heartbeat calm enough, he lifted his wand and examined the door.

His caution paid off. There was no way he would have seen the small and subtle net of silvery lines stretched across the doorframe if he’d simply followed his worry and charged in, trying to be a hero. Draco traced the lines to the knob and the side of the door, and nodded in grim admiration. Mallow had made sure there was no way Draco could open the door without triggering the spells, even if he didn’t touch the knob.

And what were those spells meant to do?

Draco checked one more time over his shoulder, almost expecting to see Sabian there, or Haagedorn with his squeaking bucket. But the corridor remained dim and silent, so he cast another charm of the kind that he’d found among his father’s papers and which he would probably be sacked merely for knowing. 

The magic left him as a trail of bright white sparks that looked oddly like breadcrumbs. They floated around the spells and returned to him with a clear picture of the spellcaster’s intentions. This particular incantation was considered an invasion of privacy, and not foolproof, since someone could cast spells in good faith and still have them go wrong. But in this case, Draco had no doubt of what appeared in his mind.

A bolt of shocking force would speed towards Harry, unstringing his nerves and squeezing his heart. He would die swiftly, though not fast enough to prevent him from getting off a scream, and it would appear as though he had died _because_ Draco entered the room.

Draco had no doubt at all how _that_ evidence would be interpreted.

He shut his eyes and stood calmly, working hard to contain his joy, because the use of those spells at least suggested Harry was still alive. Draco had to wonder if Mallow’s own compulsion towards revenge had undone him. Mallow had probably figured out that Draco was the one who’d foiled his violent poisons this afternoon and so wanted Draco to be responsible for killing Harry if possible.

Draco moved in a slow circle, pacing, and wondering what the correct thing would be to do. He could fetch someone else and show them these spells, but there was no evidence that Mallow had cast them. And in the meantime, Mallow might be watching, or have a spy who was doing so, and leaving Harry’s room so soon after he reached it would be a clear signal that Draco had learned the truth. 

No, he had to enter. Somehow. 

Draco smiled grimly a moment later. The method was clear enough; the consequences of that method were something he would have to deal with later. At that moment, he thought he could deal with being sacked from St. Mungo’s, although he had fought so hard for three years to remain there. He couldn’t deal with losing Harry.

He took a Calming Draught from the inner potions store in the pockets of his robe and uncapped it. Then he poured a few drops on his wand at the same time as he murmured another of those charms his father had taught him—this one with distinctly more spectacular results. 

His wand began to hiss and smoke. Draco reached out and swept it through the series of silvery traps Mallow had set.

All the lines dissolved at once, puffing into non-existence with tiny bangs and flashes. Draco knew it could attract attention, but in truth, he wasn’t so worried about that. The _real_ problem would be the sudden appearance of a hole where there was _no_ magic and no possibility of any. It would spread, and dissipate only after ten minutes or so, and those who felt it would know that something was wrong with the magical balance in hospital, though they wouldn’t know what had caused it until they investigated.

There was a reason this was known as the Muggle-Forming Curse.

Draco waited until the last of the silvery lines was gone, and then thrust the door open. Any other nasty spells Mallow had left near the entrance would be dissipated in the same way by Draco’s curse. He was no longer worried about them.

He stepped into the room and saw Harry lying on the bed, his face caught in a silvery stream of moonlight from the enchanted window, his lips slightly parted. Draco shut the door behind him and sagged in relief.

Until he remembered that Mallow always had two lines of attack.

Draco turned slowly in place, not lifting his feet from the floor. If Mallow could leave the silvery traps on the door and hope that Draco would kill Harry by bursting past them, he could have left a curse that would respond to slight changes in pressure like steps.

But no matter how hard Draco peered, or how much he increased the light of _Lumos_ , he couldn’t see any trap. He frowned. Perhaps Mallow was waiting, this time, to see whether the second line of attack was necessary. Draco might even have thought he was in the room at the moment, except that he’d decided it was a powerful Switching Charm and not an Invisibility Cloak that had let Mallow replace the porridge and the apple.

“Draco?”

Draco nearly leaped into the air until he realized that the whisper came from the bed. He swallowed and stepped up to it, letting one hand touch Harry’s shoulder. He didn’t quite believe that Harry was solid, real, and alive until he felt the bending and shifting of the muscles beneath his hand.

“What’s wrong?” Harry sat up and reached for his glasses, which lay on the table next to the bed. Draco made him wait while he studied the glasses closely and then cast several detection charms. There was nothing wrong with them he could see, however, so he reluctantly allowed Harry to put them on.

“What _is_ it?” By now Harry was leaning forwards so far that Draco was afraid he would fall off the bed, his muscles quivering with curiosity.

“I figured out who’s responsible for trying to kill you,” Draco told him. “And there was a curse on the door that I might have triggered if I’d simply opened it—one that would have killed you and made it look like it was my fault.”

Harry sat back against the pillow. His eyes were large and very bright. It took a moment, and thick words coming out of his mouth, before Draco realized that he was angry. “Who is it?”

“Healer Mallow,” Draco said, and then waited to be told that it was a weak or stupid conclusion. He was braced, he realized a moment later, for the kind of criticism that the Healers tended to give him.

Harry opened his mouth, then shut it. Draco watched his nostrils flare and his eyes half-shut, and knew Harry was working through the same kinds of conclusions that he had thought of earlier and fitting them in with the clues they’d had about his murderer from the beginning. His hand, on a slender shape beneath the blankets that was probably his wand, clenched down and relaxed in a regular pattern. Draco hoped that meant he was considering carefully what to do, rather than simply attacking.

“I see,” Harry said at last. “I suppose you haven’t uncovered any traces of a motive?”

“No,” Draco said. “For all I know, he could be doing it because he’s angry that you cheated his friend’s brother-in-law’s cousin at a game of cards.” Harry laughed, but Draco could tell from the sharp crackle of the sound that he wasn’t amused. Draco pressed on. “I don’t think we have evidence that would convince a jury, however.”

“We’d have to see, wouldn’t we?” Harry was quiet and slow and _dangerous_ at the moment, Draco thought, and a shiver of excitement worked its way along his spine and earthed itself at the base of his skull. Harry raised his wand in front of his eyes and held it there as if he was examining some hidden potential in the holly wood that Draco couldn’t make out. “We’ll get the evidence,” Harry said. “The most important thing to do right now is to get the information to someone outside hospital. Ron would be best. He’ll be able to coordinate the raid on Mallow’s office, or whatever he decides to do.”

“I hope that he manages it better than the raid on Pythia’s Potions,” Draco muttered. He was calming down a little now, but he still couldn’t forget how many things Aurors, unexpectedly, simply did _not_ know.

“The shopkeeper had wards set up to destroy the most illegal potions before he could get to them?”

Draco felt a hand of ice on the back of his neck this time. He kept his eyes on Harry’s wand for long moments, and his mind raced. Had he mentioned something like that in front of Harry? There were _explanations_. Harry had already proven himself more intelligent than Weasley, as far as Draco was concerned, by recognizing the ability in Draco that only superior good taste could notice. He might know about such wards, or at least suspect their existence, in ways that Weasley wouldn’t.

But that didn’t change the instant conviction that had leaped into his mind: this was not Harry.

“Yes, he did,” Draco said, and told himself Harry could have read it in Weasley’s owl. Well, read between the lines, since Weasley himself didn’t know the reason that there were no illegal potions in the shop. It wasn’t impossible. This could be Harry, gazing at him with innocent eyes. He had called Draco by his first name. He seemed to know all about the raid. There was no reason to think it was Mallow using Polyjuice, or one of Mallow’s creatures.

Except that Mallow had been close to the door—he had to have been—when he used the Switching Charm on the apple, and maybe the porridge. He could have overheard what Draco and Harry were talking about.

And except for the fact that Harry hadn’t tried to touch him once since he had come into the room, which Draco would have thought would be a priority.

Draco licked his lips and continued to press forwards. So far, Mallow had been clever. He’d said nothing that would give away his identity—if it was his identity—and he’d had reactions that could have been his own but were within the limits of possible reactions for Harry, too. Draco had to make him betray himself while not giving away his own interest in a possible betrayal. Not an easy task. “Do you think that we should go to the hospital administrators first? This is the kind of thing they would be interested in.”

Harry—or Mallow—shook his head decisively. “No. We could be stopped along the way, or worse. We have to get _outside_ hospital.”

Draco took a single shallow breath. Harry would probably kill him for the risk he was taking, but it was the only thing Draco could think of. Polyjuice lasted only an hour. Mallow would either have to take another drink soon, risking revealing what he was, or he would have to get rid of Draco before the potion wore off. That could be one reason he was so insistent on getting beyond the wards that would alert people if someone died here.

Or he could be Harry, with an excellent reason for leaving behind a place that he didn’t understand and where his enemy had the advantage, and who would be furious when he learned that Draco had suspected him.

Walking a knife’s edge, Draco met his eyes and nodded. “Yes, of course. We’ll go to Weasley. That would be best.”

“Of course it would be.” Mallow smiled at him, and Harry’s eyes gleamed. Draco told himself to stop searching for shadows in the face, which he didn’t know well enough yet to predict, and glanced away.

*

“What’s the Floo address to Weasley’s house?” Draco whispered as they crept down the corridor a few moments later. He made sure to keep to one side of Harry and slightly behind, so that he could see in an instant if Harry took a flask out of his pocket.

“We shouldn’t Floo on this floor,” Harry promptly whispered back. “Too many Healers walking around. We could run into Healer Mallow himself! Let’s get down to the ground floor and do it.”

Which made perfect sense, Draco had to admit. Maybe. Or it could be a tactic that Mallow was using to try and disguise the fact that he didn’t know Weasley’s Floo address, not being Weasley’s friend.

Down they went, and then they were on the ground floor and Draco was trying to control the hammering of his heart and look as if he were calm and cool and collected, with absolutely nothing wrong. This was the kind of occasion that made him grateful for the way his father had taught him to control himself. He couldn’t fake the signs of fear and anger before a trained Healer as well as he could in front of someone else, but he could control his expression, and in the dimness and with the need to not give away his identity, the chance was excellent that Mallow wouldn’t confront him.

Or else it was Harry, who would never notice anything in the first place that a Healer would. Draco linked his hands together behind his back and squeezed them painfully.

“The Floo connection?” he reminded Harry when it looked as if he were about to simply sneak out the front doors of hospital.

“I don’t think it would be right to use one in hospital at all,” Harry said, glancing apprehensively over his shoulder. Draco registered the inherent wrongness of the gesture and then realized that he couldn’t really say it was wrong, since he had never seen Harry exhibit that particular emotion. He hissed under his breath in frustration. Harry smiled at him, apparently mistaking the sound. “Yes, you’re right. Healer Mallow might spy on us, or someone else might come in and want to know what we’re doing.”

All true, and it fit in with Harry’s quick ability to change his plans and his stated desire to get out of hospital, Draco thought, trotting after him towards the doors. But still suspicious.

Then there was a movement ahead of them. Draco held out a warning arm, while trying to keep one eye on Harry to make sure that he wasn’t taking the moment to sneak a drink of Polyjuice and one eye on the danger ahead.

“Yes, I see it,” Harry said grimly, and at least the dangerous expression was right, as was the tight grip on the holly wand. Draco clenched his teeth in an agony of indecision.

The shadow wavered and moved towards them, and then narrowed on the floor. A single man, walking rapidly, Draco judged. Maybe someone dangerous to them, maybe simply an Apprentice Healer on errands.

The figure came around the corner, and it was Sabian. His eyes widened when he saw Draco, and he started to speak, but then he caught sight of Harry-Mallow, and frankly stared.

“What?” he asked in disbelief. “But I saw you lying on the ground in—”

As a curse exploded from Mallow’s wand, Draco silently blessed Sabian’s presence; Mallow had instinctively sent the curse towards him. He jumped Mallow from the side and managed to hit him in time to send the curse soaring wide, as well as knock him down and begin the attack first himself.

Mallow was swift, twisting underneath Draco like a serpent; it also probably helped that he had the advantage of a younger body than his usual one and battle instincts of his own, if he was the one who’d also cast the curses at Harry on the battlefield. He tried to get his wand into Draco’s ribs or pointing at his heart. Any Healer knew spells that, reversed, would cause a lot of bloody damage from there.

Draco gritted his teeth and fought back. He was good, too, and he had the advantage of Dark Arts. Small, glowing shields blazed into being above his heart and ribs and guarded them, and he struggled hard to maintain his superior position above Mallow. If he rolled under once, he thought, he was dead.

Mallow swore at him, once, and then saved his breath for the spells. Draco went flying off him with the impact of a Blasting Curse, but turned and managed to conjure a thick-woven draft of air that saved him from taking the next curse in his back. Mallow’s eyes shone with a fury that Draco would have been hard-placed to find familiar in Harry, and he scrambled up and ran for the doors.

Draco followed at once. If Mallow got out, he could commit some crime in Harry’s body that might ensure the rest of Harry’s life would be miserable.

Only when Mallow turned at bay near the doors and made a complicated gesture with Harry’s wand did Draco remember that Mallow had no particular reason to leave hospital behind. All the people who knew the truth were here, and if Sabian’s half-completed sentence was correct, Harry was still somewhere in St. Mungo’s. Sabian wouldn’t have found him otherwise.

He cursed himself more than Mallow could have done and whirled left, planting his back against the stone. But though the initial blast of the spell cut past him, it became obvious that Mallow had prepared this room as a trap. The stone surged dizzily beneath Draco, and then rose up around him. He was rapidly being encased in a small cell of it that he could imagine pressing down and crushing him, or holding him there until he suffocated.

Grimly, Draco raised his wand and intoned another Dark Arts spell of the kind that he would have lost his job for, had anyone in hospital been able to think he was competent and pay attention to him. “ _Aerius._ ”

His body grew light and transparent, and Draco shifted to the side and out between the stones.

He had done this before, and it was never a pleasant sensation. The spell enabled Draco to become a paper-thin version of himself—and was banned because of the way it slid around wards and alarms, meaning someone could spy on prominent Wizengamot members and the like with less of a chance of getting caught—but he still had to pass directly _through_ the stones. He saw flecks of grey and black that could have barred his way; light blazed through cracks and disoriented him; the weight of the stone, ignored by his body for the moment but still existing, pressed down most heavily of all. Draco was gasping by the time the spell expired and he found himself outside the stone cell again.

Mallow had turned to Sabian, and his back was to Draco. Draco felt a brief moment of dizzy triumph. Mallow must have thought the cell was sufficient to stop Draco from interfering again in the battle. He would pay for that assumption.

Draco raised his wand.

Someone called from down the corridor, “Who are you and why do you think you’re attacking a Healer?”

Draco swung around in astonishment. A figure was pelting towards them from the corridor that led up to the nearest staircase, and Draco gritted his teeth. Of course he should have realized that the noise of the battle would attract someone official to oversee it.

Then he realized something else. Anyone who’d seen enough of this battle ought to also think that it was Harry Potter Draco and Sabian were fighting, not a Healer in disguise; the Polyjuice Potion hadn’t worn off yet.

Draco made a wilder leap of trust than anything so far this night. He whirled to the side and tossed his wand to the coming figure who, if his next realization was right, probably didn’t have a wand of his own.

Harry caught it handily, gave Draco a single fierce grin, and then leaped onto Mallow’s back. Mallow had only just begun to turn; Draco suspected that Harry’s words had partially made him think he didn’t have anything to fear, or else he wanted to make sure of Sabian first.

Draco stepped out of the way as Harry’s holly wand, in the hand of a stranger, and his hawthorn wand, back in Harry’s hand for the first time in years, went to battle.

He had thought that Mallow was using the full potential of Harry’s body. Not so. The real Harry was leaping, dancing, and circling while Mallow was still struggling to turn in place. He thought nothing of curving his spine under an attack or turning his head to the side to accept a slight cut on his cheek in return for keeping his aim steady and true. He had quick hands, and a quicker casting time, and he knew all about what to do if he had a wound on his forehead with the blood dribbling into his eyes and how to cut an opponent’s feet from under him. Mallow was only holding his own because he was a powerful wizard in the first place.

Draco watched in dazed admiration until he saw Mallow’s hand go up and twitch once, in a motion that Draco recognized as the beginning of a Switching Charm.

“He’s switching!” Draco screamed.

There was no reason for Harry to know what that meant, but he somehow did, as though his mind was harnessed to Draco’s and could make the same leaps it did. He gave a nod of acknowledgment and Summoned his holly wand from Mallow’s hand, which he hadn’t dared do before, Draco thought, in the stampede of the battle.

Mallow snarled, but another wand appeared in his hand. Draco blinked. He must have intended to Switch Harry’s wand with his own, and had completed enough of the gesture that he could make his own appear. Yes, he _was_ powerful.

And twice as dangerous, using a wand that he knew and understood well, rather than one he had stolen from its rightful owner. He pointed this wand at Harry and said softly, “ _Motus in ossibus._ ”

“No!” Draco cried, but by that time, the Bone-Earthquake Spell had already taken effect and Harry was crouched on the floor, shaking, his bones beginning to shatter in his body with every tremor that wrenched through him. It was the sort of spell Mallow would probably have used before, one analytic corner of Draco’s mind chattered to him, except it would have given him away as a Healer. 

Draco had seen the results of the Bone-Earthquake Spell. So many fragments of bone scattered through a body that they were impossible to put back together; so many sinews were snapped and tendons cut by the fragments that it was hopeless to repair them. A few patients had killed themselves, or refused treatment and gone home, which amounted to the same thing, rather than live with the pain and the mangled body that had resulted.

He couldn’t allow that to happen to Harry, and it didn’t matter what he had to do to stop it. He Summoned his wand, which Harry had tossed to the floor when he called his own, and pointed it at Mallow’s hands.

“ _Manus contundo!_ ” he snarled.

Mallow cried out when invisible hammers began to strike his hands, and turned to attend to them. That had been all Draco was waiting for. There was no point in lifting the spell from Harry when Mallow would probably take the next chance to restore it, and also curse Draco so that he couldn’t help again.

Whirling to face Harry, Draco dismissed the fact that he had never performed this particular spell successfully before from his mind. There was a first time for everything, and he was a competent Healer. He was a competent investigator, even, to have solved the case before Harry or Weasley knew what was wrong. He was _fantastic_. He could do this.

“ _Nex destinatum!_ ” he said.

The lights around Harry’s body appeared to dim, though Draco knew all too well that if he had affected only the magical lights in the corridor’s wall, his spell had already failed. He maintained his stance and his expression of calm concentration with an effort, which he hoped wouldn’t be too obvious. 

The air around Harry’s body trembled and sighed, and turned cold enough for Draco to see frost on the stones. Harry stopped shaking, and then he sighed in turn, as though releasing his horror and fear.

 _And pain,_ Draco thought, his hands clenched into tight fists. _Let it to be pain, too._

The mist that rose from Harry’s body in the next moment was iron-grey, the color of prison bars. It seethed and coiled and slammed against the sides of the invisible box in which Draco had placed it, seeking and finding no escape. Draco ground his teeth when his wand suddenly snapped taut and pointed at the mist, while an invisible quivering line seemed to start in his belly and join them.

The spell—that was what the mist was, or at least represented—strained towards him like a vicious dog on a leash. Draco stared at it, held his wand steady, and tried not to think about what would happen if the magic did succeed in reaching him.

The Intention’s Murder spell, which he’d used, was meant to pull a curse away from someone’s body and dissipate its force, ending it in such a way that all the damage it had caused would be reversed. It was much more powerful than a simple _Finite_ , and the only method Draco had been able to think of for handling a curse as strong as Mallow’s.

But if it failed, then the spell would snap into the caster’s body, and Draco’s bones would begin to shatter in turn. He was not foolish enough to think that Harry would be able to help him. It was a horrible way to die, and he might have condemned himself to it.

But even that would hurt less than watching Harry endure it. Draco kept his eyes on the spell, never moving, and didn’t pay attention even when he heard movement to the side. He knew Harry had stood up and retrieved his wand, because he’d seen that from the corner of his eye. If Mallow had managed to defeat Draco’s powerful Dark spell, which had few counters, Draco would have to trust that Harry could handle himself.

“Take _that!_ ”

The voice shouting was one Draco knew, but not Harry’s. He tried not to let it startle him too badly, and bore down with his will on the congealed mist, which lashed and recoiled on itself, knotting one corner of itself into a tail that flailed furiously away, and began a high, painful hissing like a teakettle.

Mallow gave a bellow that sounded more outraged than hurt, and then Harry leaped into battle with an inarticulate cry of his own. Draco ached to turn and watch. But he thought Harry would probably prefer it if his bones weren’t broken, and stayed in place.

The mist screeched at him, hissed again, and then, with an air of protest so keen that Draco wouldn’t have been surprised to see it form a face that would wear the expression, turned inside out and faded. Draco closed his eyes and gasped in a breath that felt as life-giving as though he’d been actively suffocated. Then he turned to see what he could do.

Sabian was dodging around Mallow like a hound snapping at a horse’s heels, his eyes so bright with fury that Draco blinked. His hexes and charms weren’t doing much, but they kept Mallow off-balance and made it harder for him to resist Harry’s assault. Harry, of course, was dueling as magnificently as he had before, driving Mallow in circles and looking for the opening that would permit him to bring him down.

Draco shuddered once and then focused on Mallow’s hands. Already he had managed to get rid of the Hammerhands Curse, and he was weaving—behind a shield so fine that it was nearly invisible—another spell Draco recognized.

This one would simply stop Harry’s heart.

Furious, Draco flicked his wand and muttered the first spell he could think of, one that was so childish he would never have bothered, most of the time, to cast it in a fight more serious than a schoolboy struggle. “ _Nudus_.”

Mallow’s clothes vanished, including the clothes he’d stolen from Harry and the ring that he’d been wearing on one finger, drawn from God knew where; maybe it was a magical artifact he had intended to bring into the battle when the time was right. He froze, staring down at himself, and since he was still Polyjuiced as Harry, Draco got a longer look than he’d thought he would at what was awaiting him.

From the way Sabian gaped, Draco rather feared that the other Apprentice Healer might have switched his crush on Hermione Granger to one on someone else instead.

Of all three of them, Harry was the only one who didn’t lose his composure. His Stunner knocked Mallow flying, his Summoning Charm caught the deadly wand and pulled it towards him, and he was binding Mallow’s hands and feet in the next instant, faster than Draco would have thought the spells could be cast. He walked over and stared down with a grim face, then conjured a blanket and draped it over Mallow’s limp form.

“ _Finally_ ,” he said, to no one in particular, and then turned around and stalked towards Draco.

Draco stood there and watched him come. From the look in Harry’s eyes, he thought he must be angry about the spell that had rendered Mallow naked. He opened his mouth to defend himself, including a claim that he had forgotten Sabian was there and hadn’t realized the revelation would have that much effect on him, which was certainly true.

Having his lips open like that made it all the more convenient for Harry to seize his shoulders and bear him backwards, thrusting his tongue into Draco’s mouth, Draco had to admit a few breathless moments later. 

“Don’t ever do something like that again,” Harry began to mutter between kisses and nips, which had a tendency to move further away from Draco’s mouth and further south the longer they went on. “What were you _thinking?_ I’m the one who should be able to duel crazed murderers bent on destroying me. You’re the one who’s supposed to save my life when they try to poison me or do something else that a Healer would know more about. I thought it was a good partnership, and then you had to change things around like that.”

Draco yanked in air in a desperate gasp and put his hand on Harry’s, which had dipped to cup his groin. Draco didn’t _think_ Sabian could see, because of the way their bodies were turned, but it was still more than he had wanted to show Sabian so early on—or at all, really. “I didn’t—I mean, you can’t possibly think that I would—where were _you_ , anyway? How did Mallow take you by surprise and get the hair for the Polyjuice?”

Harry sighed. “He came in Polyjuiced as you, and I fell for it this time,” he admitted reluctantly. “He knocked me unconscious, and I woke up in a deserted hospital room and worked on the spells locking me in without a wand, which is why it took me so long to get here. Of course, when I heard you fighting, that inspired me to hurry.” He curved a hand behind Draco’s neck and kissed him soundly enough to make his head spin.

“Um, Malfoy?” Sabian asked, sounding meek.

“We’re busy,” Harry snapped at him. “Don’t you have bedpans to change or something?” He locked his mouth on Draco’s neck again and sucked so hard that Draco felt as though the skin was pulling away.

“It’s just that, um, it sounds like people are coming,” Sabian said, and Draco used the words like a shower of cold water, to force himself to pull away.

“ _Draaaaco_ ,” Harry said, with a pout and reproachful stare that Draco could already tell was going to be hell on his self-control. With great effort, he managed to frown at Harry rather than put his mouth to work soothing the pout.

“We have to find out why Mallow did this,” he said. “And explain the situation when they see the damage to the walls and test for the spells on our wands.” He was privately grateful, now, that he had cast such a harmless hex on Mallow last rather than the complex (and partially Dark) spell that had yanked the Bone-Earthquake Curse away from Harry. “Don’t you want to be able to enter St. Mungo’s again if you need to, rather than be exiled from it?”

“God, yes,” Harry said, as though someone had brought an unexpected problem to his attention. “How am I going to date you, otherwise?”

“We’re not sleeping together in hospital!” Draco hissed at him from the corner of his mouth as they turned to face the hospital administrators’ approach, together.

“What else are all those beds good for?” Harry asked, in a voice that sounded honestly shocked and indignant. Only his rapidly twitching lips and half-squinted eyes gave him away.

If it hadn’t been for the appearance of Healer Okono-Jones and Healer Nonne a moment later, clucking under their breaths like a pair of chickens confronted with a group of dead chicks, Draco would have hit him.

*

It was six interrogations later, and Draco was left sitting in a chair, head leaning back against the wall. It felt too heavy to lift.

“Here, have this.”

Draco cracked one eyelid and then managed a wan smile when he saw that Harry was in front of him with a cup of tea. “Thank you,” he murmured, slinging the warm liquid down his throat with a swift motion. “You wouldn’t believe how much I needed that.”

“I might.” Harry sat down on the only other chair in this deserted little room—the patient who’d had it last had suffered from a case of Spattergroit so virulent they’d had to move out all the other furniture—and cocked his head at him. “Ron talked to you, didn’t he? I know going two rounds of questions with him leaves me feeling as though my brain’s liquefied.”

“Him, but also other people.” Draco blew across the surface of his tea, then thought about why he was bothering and swallowed the rest of the cuppa in one motion. Harry pulled out a teakettle from what appeared to be the bottom of his left sleeve and refreshed the cup without even asking. Draco smiled wanly at him and leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “I think the Healers would rather admit that _anything_ else had happened than what did.”

“You heard about the reason Mallow wanted me dead?” Harry asked.

“Varden told me that the Aurors had got it out of him, but I didn’t quite believe what he said,” Draco admitted. “Surely he must be wrong?”

“No.” Harry grimaced as though he had bitten into a sour apple. “He thought I had survived long enough, and wanted to see what it would take to kill me. Which doesn’t even have the pleasure of being an original motive. The Aurors who’ve tried to kill me in the past thought I had survived long enough, too. Though I suspect professional jealousy was part of the reason there, too,” he added thoughtfully.

“I’m thinking about the spells he used in the duel against you,” Draco said. “Most of them were modified versions of the spells that we use to _cure_. It seems that he took death’s side in this and decided that you should die because you’d outwitted and cheated death long enough. Some of the older Healers have a seriously skewed view of how much control they have over people’s lives. He’d treated you in the past. Perhaps he thought he should be the one to say when you’d had enough life.”

“That makes more sense than some of the theories I was coming up with.” Harry flashed him a smile. “I reckon we won’t know for sure until and unless we get a full confession rather than a few scattered words, but thank you.”

“For what?” Draco asked. His eyes kept wanting to drift shut, and he thought he had to be mistaken about some of the things that Harry was trying to thank him for.

“For that particular theory,” Harry said. “For organizing my knowledge of Mallow’s motives more than anyone had managed to do so far.” He put down his cup and stood up, and now he wasn’t smiling. “For saving my life. For making sense of things in a way that most other people fail to do.”

Draco cleared his throat. “You’re welcome. Are you all right? You don’t look happy.”

“When I think of how much I owe to you,” Harry breathed, “it’s overwhelming. It’s awe-inspiring. Draco…” He moved closer.

Draco barely managed to put down his teacup in time. Harry was kissing him in a way that told him this was more serious than anything they’d shared so far. Draco could do little but tangle his hands in Harry’s hair and hold on for the ride.

Harry kissed him long and hot and deep, and then acted as if he would crawl into Draco’s lap. Draco squeaked and shook his head. “Not here,” he said. “Someone could walk through the door at any moment, and we could break the chair.”

“You’re right,” Harry said, pulling away and looking as disheveled as though he’d spent hours snogging. “We have to do something about that.” He aimed his wand at the door, and Draco heard the snick of the lock sliding home.

“We still shouldn’t do this in the chair,” Draco breathed, trying to ignore the thrill that had traveled through him. He’d never done _anything_ like this. He had followed the rules to the letter instead, trying to convince the Healers that he was worthy of becoming a journeymage. Of course, Harry could probably get away with things like this because he was Harry Potter, but Draco would never have thought of taking advantage in hospital.

“Right again,” Harry said. “So we’ll do this against the wall.” He gave Draco a wicked smile that he could do with a lot more of, and then practically picked Draco up and whirled him around so that his back was against the wall.

Draco opened his mouth, but he never knew if he was going to protest or laugh or voice approval, because Harry’s mouth descended neatly back into place, hot and sucking, and his hand closed around Draco’s cock. Draco was afraid that he must have jumped, given the vibration of Harry’s chuckle down his throat a moment later, and was grateful for the weight that held him in place.

“Yes,” Harry said. “No one’s ever touched you enough, have they?” He was looking at Draco with greedy eyes now. His voice had dipped several notches lower. “Not that I mind that, since it leaves more for me.” His hand slipped to the side and gave an agile twist, and Draco cried out as his knees buckled.

“Oh, dear,” Harry said in a voice of mock concern. “We wouldn’t want anyone to hear that, would we? I think I’d better stop.” Draco moaned, but he was breathless, and it didn’t keep Harry from pulling away and beginning to unfasten his trousers. “Yes,” he continued in that deep voice, “we’d better stop and do something else.”

 _This isn’t happening,_ Draco thought in awe as he watched Harry’s cock emerge. It was flushed so dark that Draco clenched his teeth. He had never actively wanted to suck someone else’s cock—he thought of that as a special favor to be awarded when someone fucked him good and proper—but he wanted it now.

“Now,” Harry said, as if in echo of his thoughts, and leaned forwards. He had already unbuttoned Draco’s trousers and slid his pants to the side, apparently. Draco thought he would have noticed something as exposing as standing there with his cock hanging out, but Harry had gripped both their erections in his hand and was rubbing them slowly back and forth together, and his ability to remember changed to a storm of flickering bolts in his head.

He wanted to close his eyes; he wanted to keep them open. He shivered, and his head banged against the wall. Harry smiled at him, and then arched his neck back, probably so that he could groan and sigh with more enthusiasm.

Draco clutched at Harry’s shoulders embarrassingly soon, but he was genuinely afraid that he would have melted and slid down the wall otherwise. His legs had joined the general shivering. His stomach was tight with anticipation. He wanted to say something, but he was breathing too hard. He shook his head, and a quiet whine emerged from his throat.

“That’s it,” Harry whispered. Draco blinked and found that Harry was focused on the present again, his eyes bright and piercing. “Do you know how beautiful you are? Do you know how long I’ve waited to do this?”

Draco wanted to say “no.” He wanted to remind Harry that they hadn’t known each other, _really_ known each other, all that long, so Harry couldn’t have been waiting all that long.

But words had rolled down his throat, deserting him along with his ability to remember. He whined again and glanced down so that he could see Harry’s hand rubbing briskly along the heads of their joined cocks, slowing when he reached the shafts, his fingers spreading as if he wanted to span the whole of their erections at once. 

Colors. The darkness of Harry’s erection, the comparable pallor of his own, the blunt pinkish squares of Harry’s nails, the ragged places where he had bitten or chewed them gleaming with red, and the glaze that was precome spreading over everything, the slipperiness and the warmth that Draco could _see_ as well as feel—

It overwhelmed him, and he came.

The heat in his belly stretched and snapped all the way through him, and his throat constricted. That was good, because he would probably have babbled nonsense otherwise, and Draco knew no one wanted to hear _that_. He scratched Harry’s arms, and he did pant and whimper enough to satisfy a small country, and his pleasure was great enough that for long moments he couldn’t even feel his body; the sensation seemed to haunt him along invisible nerves.

“Draco,” Harry said. “ _Draco_.” It sounded so important that Draco tried to pay attention, because he thought Harry needed him to, but it was just Harry coming and groaning and thrusting his hips after all. Draco smiled, hoping that no other response was required of him right now, and wrapped his arms around Harry’s hips, closing his eyes with a sigh. 

Harry seemed to shake himself apart when he came, and put himself back together at the same time. He ended up leaning forwards, maybe to prop Draco up as much as to balance himself, and whispering his endearments against Draco’s throat. Draco stroked his neck and felt the rasp of his hair against his chin and was so perfectly content that it seemed like blasphemy when Harry stirred.

“I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” Harry repeated, stepping back and looking at him intently. Draco wanted to squirm. No one had ever looked at him like that, or at least not while he was leaning against a wall, pants open, and covered in dripping come. “Do you believe me?”

“I believe you,” Draco said, glad that his throat had unlocked when he most wanted and needed it to.

Harry kissed him, a gentle brush of his lips this time rather than a quest after his tongue. Draco waited until he had some of his strength and then kissed back. The lazy brushing of their tongues happened anyway and caused a thrill to race through Draco’s body and his cock to twitch.

Harry noticed and chuckled. Draco waited to feel humiliation after the laugh, but he couldn’t. It was nothing but the kind of secret laugh that lovers often shared, he thought, rather than a laugh at his expense.

“I’m good, but not _that_ good,” Harry said, and reached for his wand to cast the cleaning charms. Draco did the same thing, and was glad that Harry, who had chosen to cast on him first, used the kind that made Draco’s skin tingle softly with the sensation of cleanliness, rather than the kind he typically used on his patients’ bedsheets. He’d had a few lovers before who assumed everyone was made of rough cloth.

“So,” Harry said when they were buttoned back up, and cocked an eyebrow at him expectantly.

“Is this going to be a discussion where I have to think?” Draco asked apprehensively. “Because I think it would be best if we had one of those tomorrow, at the earliest.”

Harry laughed, but his smile faded quickly enough that Draco knew something serious was coming. He moved towards the chairs again, and cast a Warming Charm on his tea. He wanted something to hold him up other than the wall if Harry said distressing words. 

He had to wonder—because he always doubted good fortune—if Harry was about to say that this one wanking session was all he had wanted and he was going back to the She-Weasel in the morning. But he could see the affection shining in Harry’s eyes when he went back to sit in his own chair, and he blew out his breath and tried to remind himself that he didn’t have to be a pessimist _all_ the time. Just most of it.

“We have to discuss your future,” Harry said, leaning forwards and letting his clasped hands dangle between his knees. Draco tried to ignore the sensation that he was pointing to his cock, despite the fact that it was going to be incredibly hard not to think of Harry in terms of his cock for a while yet. “Do you really intend to stay at St. Mungo’s?”

Draco blinked. “Unless they sack me for daring to attack a Healer. Some of these bastards are like that sometimes, no matter what the Healer might have done,” he added bitterly.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Harry said, and he flashed Draco a grin. “I think that they’ll see reason once the full tale of his crimes comes out. There’s no way that they can pass this off as a misunderstanding or an unwarranted attack on Mallow.”

“Yeah, but they’ll try,” Draco muttered, slumping in his chair and staring at his hands.

Harry raised his eyebrows. “Do you want me to list the reasons why they won’t?”

“Yes,” Draco declared, sitting up. “I think it would make me feel better.”

“Right,” Harry said, after a short pause, as if he had to take that long to decide whether or not Draco was joking. “Well. For one thing, it _is_ going to matter that you managed to disable Mallow without killing him. I’m going to say that I was losing the battle until you intervened. You saved my life again, Draco.”

Draco felt a smug gush of feeling travel through him at the reminder. “I did, didn’t I?” he asked happily. He felt confident enough about his feelings for Harry and Harry’s feelings for him by now that he didn’t think gratitude was compelling Harry to express more than he really wanted to.

Harry smiled. “Yeah. And when we tell them about the _variety_ of ways that he tried to kill me—the poisons that you foiled, the potion with poppies in it that you foiled, and the spells and serpents and other methods before that—then they’ll have to admit that he was obsessed and mad. It’s not as though they can claim that you were mad for opposing him. He gave you a patient, and you tended him with all the resources at your disposal. That’s another reason, too. They’ll have to admit that you’re much more competent than they thought you. Most Apprentice Healers couldn’t take care of patients on their own, could they?”

Draco snorted, thinking of Varden. “Are you kidding?”

Harry nodded. “So. That will be another reason for them to listen. Mallow was trying to undermine you, and you proved him wrong. They’ll have to consider that, Draco. No, they really will,” he added, when Draco opened his mouth to argue with Harry’s optimism. “I promise. I’ll repeat the results of the interrogation and my own experiences until they surrender and at least promote you to journeymage.”

Draco hesitated. He wanted badly to say something else, but he thought it might come across as complaining about troubles that hadn’t even happened yet, when Harry had already done so much for him.

“Just spit it out,” Harry said. He seemed to be distressingly good at recognizing when someone was struggling with a question.

“I don’t know if they’ll make my life as journeymage any more pleasant than the one I have right now,” Draco said quietly. “They could keep me frozen at that stage for even longer than the three years that I’ve been an Apprentice Healer. They won’t like that I made hospital look badly by exposing Mallow.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Harry said at once. “St. Mungo’s would have looked far worse if they lost a patient as famous as I am.” He made the statement without conceit, somehow, Draco thought in wonder. He couldn’t imagine anyone else alive who could do that. “They’ll listen to reason.”

Draco sighed. “Reason has nothing to do with some of their prejudices against me, Harry. Yes, some of them were holding me back because they genuinely believed the others when they said that I was incompetent, but those others hate me for my last name. That prejudice isn’t going to dissolve into thin air no matter what heroic deeds I perform.”

Harry looked thoughtful. “How sure are you of that?”

“Very sure,” Draco said. “There’s no reason for so many different Healers to have used me as nothing more than menial labor over the years. The ones who don’t have a prejudice against me didn’t care enough to find out the truth, or looked straight at my skills and then ignored them, or let themselves be persuaded that I was really a poor worker when they could see for themselves that I wasn’t.” He closed his eyes. It was stupid for him to feel so bitter when he and Harry had both survived and escaped and then just made love, but there it was. He was losing the glory and the exhilaration of survival now, and thinking about what his life would be like two days from now, which was the longest he expected the excitement to last.

“Did you know that there are other ways to become a Healer?” Harry asked softly. “Other programs?”

Draco opened one eye and snorted. “I looked into that when I first made the decision for my career. The other programs are with individual Healers, and cost too much money for me to afford after the losses of the reparations.”

Harry nodded, looking vaguely uncomfortable. Draco wondered if the reparations were one of those subjects they should never discuss. “Well, there are other ways of paying one’s way in,” he said. “Skill, for example. I could ask one of the Healers I know to set an exam for you. I don’t know that he would take you—he’s willing to make an exception for me and _look_ , but he won’t necessarily accept a candidate for my sake—but it would be a chance to escape from St. Mungo’s. If you can accept that much as a gift from me,” he added softly.

Draco swallowed. “I—I don’t know,” he said. On the one hand, he had never wanted anything so badly that he could remember, except Harry a few minutes ago. On the other, he didn’t want anyone to think he had only become a Healer because of his boyfriend.

“Then think of it as payment for the bundle of life-debts I owe you,” Harry said. “You can tell that to anyone who asks. I don’t mind.” He grinned abruptly. “Well, _partial_ payment. That means that I’ll still have plenty of ways to pay off the rest.” He lowered his eyelashes and threw Draco a smoldering look. Draco stared. He hadn’t known that someone as pure and good as Harry Potter _knew_ how to do smoldering looks.

Then he swallowed and allowed himself to actually consider what Harry seemed to be offering. He had to close his eyes, and he felt a little faint as full realization swept across him.

“I don’t—you don’t have to do that,” he said, even as he wondered if there was some kind of catch to it. What would happen if he and Harry stopped dating? Granted, at the moment Draco couldn’t imagine what would make him stop doing that, but it might happen. Or what would happen if Harry, who was no judge of Healers’ professionalism in the way that Draco knew himself to be, had made the wrong decision and fastened on someone who couldn’t teach Draco what he needed to know? “I mean—there’s no saying that it would work out, and—”

A firm, warm hand gripped his jaw. Startled, Draco opened his eyes and stared at Harry, who was leaning close and looking at him without a smile for the first time in this conversation.

“I think that you’ve been mistreated for so long that all you can think of happening is the worst,” Harry said softly, commandingly. “Now, I can’t _promise_ that everything is going to work out for the best. But I can promise that I’ll be by your side, working as hard as I can to make sure that it does. And this Healer won’t accept you simply because I recommend you, or make you into a journeymage or a full Healer simply because you’re dating me. He’s hard enough to evaluate your work for himself. The most he’ll do is consider you a bit more seriously because you’re leaving St. Mungo’s, which he thinks is ridiculously warped by the pretensions of its Healers.”

“Who is he?” Draco asked through paper-dry lips. Tears were actually stinging the corners of his eyes when he thought of the distance Harry was walking for him, but he wouldn’t shed them, of course. He could feel them properly by himself.

“Reginald Hooker,” Harry replied.

Draco sat up so fast that he dislodged Harry’s hand on his face. “ _What_? He’s famous! There’s no way that he would accept someone like me! He must have dozens of people lined up outside of his house to study with him.”

Harry laughed. “No, because he’s too fair for them, and his standards too exacting. That’s why I can be sure that he won’t be influenced by your reputation, or mine.”

“Hooker,” Draco repeated in wonder. He had heard stories about Hooker since he first became an apprentice. He had invented several dozen of the more common healing charms and potions, and he had saved the lives of desperately ill patients with a dogged determination that the other Healers had to respect him for, no matter how much they hated the way he ignored orthodox opinion. Draco could think of few Healers he would rather study with.

“I’m glad that you apparently like this solution,” Harry said dryly, and then his voice changed. Draco looked up and couldn’t name the expression that he saw on Harry’s face, or the emotion in his eyes. “Please, let me give you this much. You’ve given me so many gifts, and I feel as though I’m falling behind. I’m hopelessly owing you debts that I can’t ever repay.”

His heart full, Draco reached out and cupped Harry’s face in turn. “Don’t think of it that way,” he whispered. “My whole _future_ is going to be different. I’ll finally be getting out of here and have a chance to become a Healer. And there’s you.”

Harry turned his head to the side and kissed Draco’s palm. “I love you,” he said.

Draco closed his eyes. He was soaring, twisting among the clouds in a new direction.

No, there was no reason to believe that all his studies with Hooker would go well, or that he and Harry would be together forever. But he had a _chance_. And that chance was worth more than what he might have had, so much more.

“And I love you,” he said, opening his eyes.

Harry smiled and kissed his palm again.

*

“So you’re _really_ leaving?”

Draco smiled in spite of himself at Sabian’s plaintive voice. He knew Sabian liked him, but he hadn’t envisioned how _much_ he did. He turned around, slipped the last of his files into the satchel he’d been packing for the last half-hour, and nodded. “Yes. I think it’s for the best, really. You know that there are already mutters going around about how I hurt Healer Mallow more than he deserved.”

Sabian flushed. “But I hurt him, too. And no one is saying that about _me_.”

Draco sighed and considered him for a moment. Sabian was still _young_ in a lot of ways. “I know,” he said at last. “But you don’t have the reputation that I do.”

“Oh.” Sabian stared at the floor for a moment, pondering. “I wish I could come with you.”

“If you do well enough in the Apprentice Healer program,” Draco promised, “or if I hear that they’re treating you unfairly, then I’ll make sure that I put in a good word for you with Healer Hooker. Not that that would get you accepted, mind,” he had to add. “I hear that his standards are very high.”

“You’re studying with _him_?” Sabian’s envy was palpable, and Draco had to admit to himself that he was enjoying it. “How did you get the chance?”

“I only know that I’ll be introduced to him,” Draco said. “I can’t say that I’ll actually be able to study with him. His standards are _very_ high.”

Sabian astonished him utterly by landing forwards and pounding him on the shoulder. “I know you’ll succeed,” he said fiercely. “You’re a good Healer, and you’re smart. You solved the whole mystery, didn’t you?”

“Well,” Draco said, not unwilling to accept the praise, “yes.”

Sabian nodded, and then sighed. “It’s not going to be as fun around here without you.”

Draco fought to keep his eyebrows from rising. Was tracking down and then fighting a murderous Healer Sabian’s definition of _fun_? Perhaps Draco should remember to recommend that he become an Auror Healer when he had finished at St. Mungo’s. “I appreciate the compliment,” he said, and reached out. “Good luck.”

Sabian pumped his hand and then walked out slowly, shaking his head. Harry stepped in, raising his eyebrows.

“How do you deal with your hero-worshippers?” Draco asked, hefting the satchel. “I thought that having one would be more pleasant than it was. Not that he’s not a good lad, but I feel responsible for him.”

“Mine are usually more annoying, so I don’t,” Harry said cheerfully. Then his smile vanished as it had earlier when he started talking about Draco’s pessimism. “Are you ready for this? I know you’ve been here for three years. Leaving must be hard.”

Draco shook his head. “I don’t have friends here,” he said simply. “Except Sabian. And I’m in love with you. That makes the decision easy enough.”

Harry reached out and gripped his hand silently, almost crushing it. Draco decided that Harry probably had some insecurities of his own, if he had really thought that Draco would choose St. Mungo’s over him.

For what Draco sincerely hoped would be the last time—unless he was wounded or Hooker recommend that he come here to observe something—they walked down the pale corridors, past the wards and the rooms that Draco had come to know so well. No one came out to watch them depart, but occasionally they passed someone who stared at them in disbelieving hostility. Draco ignored them magnificently each time.

And then they were out the doors, and into the fresh, clear air of a bright evening, and Draco knew his future was in front of him.

And by his side.

The End.


End file.
